


the glass fortress

by basketofnovas (slashmarks)



Series: brilliant difficulty [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ensemble Cast, F/F, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Minor Sirius Black/Remus Lupin, Multi, Murder, Politics, Pureblood Politics (Harry Potter), Second War with Voldemort, Sirius Black Free from Azkaban, The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:27:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 163,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26195635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmarks/pseuds/basketofnovas
Summary: One year after Sirius was cleared and Harry went to live with him for good, Voldemort is gaining power, assisted by his most loyal followers. Harry's new family is regaining members as it works with Amelia Bones to wrest political control of the magical world from Cornelius Fudge and defend it from Voldemort. But Harry could never have stayed on the sidelines of this fight, and now Voldemort's followers are trying, for unknown reasons, to take him alive. And that's not his only challenge this year: he also has to take his O.W.L.s.
Relationships: Bellatrix Black Lestrange & Narcissa Black Malfoy, Cho Chang/Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy & Harry Potter, Hermione Granger & Harry Potter & Ron Weasley, Narcissa Black Malfoy & Andromeda Black Tonks, Sirius Black & Bellatrix Black Lestrange, Sirius Black & Harry Potter, Sirius Black & Narcissa Black Malfoy, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin, Tracey Davis/Daphne Greengrass
Series: brilliant difficulty [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1876930
Comments: 992
Kudos: 475





	1. Prologue: Chichevache Lane

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so excited to put the second book up! This draft is finished and beta'd, and currently undergoing some final edits. I am planning to post once/week on Sundays.
> 
> Some assorted notes:
> 
> Warnings: This work contains non-graphic references to child abuse, including emotional, physical and sexual; forced marriage and child/teen marriage; domestic violence; crimes against humanity including torture, murder, rape, lethally unethical magical/scientific research and terrorism; depicts a murderous and unjust court system, bigotry and violent hate crimes; and contains a non-graphic consensual sex scene between underage teenagers.
> 
> Canon: While I have sometimes used extracanon details, I have also freely ignored them or rearranged them to suit myself. I am attempting to remain canon compliant, but in accordance with the demands of an AU I have increasingly made up magic that I believe fits the tone of canon but does not exist in it; and I have sometimes manipulated information given by characters in canon, especially when they reached it by deduction, are unreliable or have motives to lie.
> 
> Title: All titles in this series are from [The Spoils of Annwn](https://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/text/preiddeu-annwn), a fourteenth century Welsh Arthurian poem.
> 
> Pairings: The teenagers in this work are still figuring out relationships, both romantic and platonic. They may have fights, short term relationships and breakups, just like canon. If you are uncomfortable reading Harry Potter fanfic with canon-typical fighting and silent treatment among the Trio, this may not be the work for you.
> 
> Beta credits: Thank you to my beta readers spellingmynamewrong, Phoenix Seeker, Lonelyaura and peonyprice, my Brit picker Smudge_Rat, and my writing partner/alpha reader Tassledown for all of your help with this work, past and forthcoming.

The lane was long and winding. Tall, elegant houses lined it, spaced far apart and filled with elegant people who referred to it as a country lane. The street itself was cobbled deeply and unevenly. Cars did not come here, while horses occasionally did; but primarily it was a lane for people to walk in. At this particular time there was a miserable gray rain tapping at the elegant windows in the elegant houses, and it was only a few minutes after dawn. The street was empty.

A faint _pop_ sounded. 

A figure cloaked in a deep hood and a skirt long enough to rustle over the cobbles appeared. It consulted the street numbers on the closest gates, then, getting its bearings, began to walk down the street furtively, hurriedly. If there were eyes at any of the nearest windows, they would not have found this remarkable, for furtive, hurried and covered in deep cloaks was the accepted way for the elegant women who lived on this street to come and go, if indeed they had a need to come and go alone, which they rarely did. 

The particular cloak was a deep navy blue and embroidered with stars. It did not recognizably belong to the widowed Mistress Edgecombe, Gloria Longbottom; nor the yet-unmarried Miss Willa Crabbe; nor any other young woman who might have had reason to scurry home in the dawn light on this secret; and so it did not provide useful fodder for gossip. But it was clearly of their sort of person and did not attract interest for being out of place either. There was no reason for interest at all.

A second, louder pop sounded, and a second figure appeared.

This one wore a cloak just as deep and long, but of a uniform dark color and a decidedly shabbier quality, with a few discernible patches in it. This was still not cause for alarm, but the way it rushed after the first might be.

"Wait!" 

The first figure glanced over its shoulder and hurried faster. The second raced to catch up, startling a squirrel at the base of a nearby tree. Both figures jumped.

"Cissy - Narcissa, wait," the second figure called, softer, hurrying to catch up with the first.

"You have to go back, Andy," Narcissa said, turning to stride off quickly in her original direction. The second figure paced her, although from several feet away. 

"We have to wait for Sirius--"

"I have made up my mind. _Go back_ , Andy," Narcissa said, speeding up. "When she sees you--"

"Oh, because the old woman's going to be happier to see _you?_ " Andy said, undeterred. "We said Sirius would--"

"Sirius will be ill for months yet. I have decided," Narcissa said, looking away to close the discussion; but her confidence that the second woman would only argue was misplaced. Andy caught up and grabbed her arm, swinging her around to face her.

"Andromeda--" Narcissa said.

" _Tell me_ you at least have a plan," Andromeda said. "Were you just going to knock on the door and hope?"

They glared at each other from inside their hoods. The rain fell in streams down their waterproof cloaks, forming small rivers that flowed around and sometimes over sunken cobblestones. 

"Fine," Narcissa said at length. "But let me do the talking. I wasn't going to knock on the door at all; I know which window is her bedroom."

They made their way, side by side, down the road. At the far end of the lane, the houses were perhaps a bit shabbier, the gardens overgrown. These houses had once been as tall and elegant as those where the sisters had first appeared, but they had gone out of fashion a bit, sustained damage that had not been repaired. A few were clearly closed up, not just for the season, but for years.

"Here," Narcissa said finally. "Number thirteen, Chichevache Lane."

They stood back a moment and looked over the iron fence. The climbing roses had taken over the property; they streamed over the fence and around it, binding the gate nearly permanently shut, and assaulted the red brick of the house. A number of windows would probably never open again. They had swallowed the hedge along the house and were slowly strangling it, had laid siege to and collapsed the trellis, and were on the verge of pulling apart the roof.

"I'd swear that rose was malicious," Andromeda remarked.

"Perhaps Muriel Prewett's turned it into her Horcrux," Narcissa said, and swung surprisingly nimbly over the useless gate, avoiding the thorns.

Andromeda followed her and swore when they tore her cloak hem. Narcissa only laughed and circled slowly around the property.

"No wardings?" Andromeda said questioningly.

"The usual enchantments," Narcissa said. "We don't intend the household harm."

"True. Which window, then?"

Narcissa pointedly silently to one of the few entirely clear of roses on this side of the house, four stories up. They looked at it for a moment.

"Here I forgot my broom," Andromeda said.

"Don't be stupid," said Narcissa, and stooped. She located several pebbles and, taking her wand from her sleeve, levitated them up to tap at the window. She also drew back her hood, just enough that it was possible to make out her face.

The window was thrust open only a few minutes later, and a woman put her head out. She had once been as elegant as the people who filled the houses down the lane, but she was now rather tired and nearing seventy. Her face had sunken into a kind of diffident apathy that was not an attractive look on anyone and her movements were sloppily quick instead of graceful and deliberate. She banged her head into the casement and swore, in fact, in the process of looking down.

But her near-black curls streamed down all the way to the window on the next story down, and the lines of her face were familiar to both sisters.

"Lucretia!" Narcissa called, cupping her hands around her mouth. "LUCRETIA!"

"Narcissa!" Lucretia called back. "TEN MINUTES!"

"SIDE DOOR!" Narcissa roared back. Her shouting entirely belied her usual soft voice and dainty persona. In fact she sounded like a commander bellowing orders on the battlefield. Lucretia saluted wryly before pulling her hair back inside and banging the casement shut.

Narcissa led the way again to the side door. It was drowning in rose alongside a competing ivy from the opposite side of the house. The ivy had long ago resigned itself to strangulation and death, but was going to make the rose pay dearly for it.

"Are you quite sure this door will open?" Andromeda asked after they had stared in silence at it for a little too long, and the quiet began to feel ominous.

" _Diffindo_ ," Narcissa muttered, slashing her wand up. It was still inside her sleeve. Rose and ivy fell in a tangle from the door frame, and Andromeda, who had not seen her sister draw, jumped. "Sloppy, Andy."

"I imagine I'll be back in practice soon," Andromeda murmured.

"When she comes out," Narcissa said. "Perhaps you had better not--"

"Talk, I know. You can't hide me from her forever, and if she agrees to come to Sirius--"

The door opened and Andromeda cut off abruptly.

Lucretia had dressed as well as packed in ten minutes. She was now wearing a set of navy robes fifteen years out of date and a periwinkle shawl over her contained hair. She carried only a carpet bag, with a bright pattern that appeared to move on its own. 

She seemed to have changed her personality as well as her clothing in ten minutes; her face was realigned into an expression of bright interest, and her eyes sparkled. It made her look quite as beautiful as any of the people on the street, if not more; perhaps even as beautiful as the two nieces who had come to retrieve her.

"Your wand?" Narcissa asked at once, and Lucretia shook her head. Narcissa ground her teeth audibly.

Lucretia laid a hand on her shoulder. "It hardly matters now, Cissy." She glanced at the other figure. "Bella...?"

"Not as such," Andromeda said, and drew back her own hood as well.

Narcissa groaned audibly, but Lucretia only looked thoughtful. "Andromeda, then? What _do_ your sisters call you...?"

"Andy, usually," Andromeda said. "Look, we need to go before Muriel sees--"

"Oh, there's not much risk of that now," Lucretia said, lips quirking. "Not ever again."

Narcissa smiled back, bright and fierce. Andromeda looked between them, and after a long moment when it seemed she might object, smiled, too. "Good," she said, and Lucretia stepped forward to kiss her cheek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Liked this? [Come find it](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/627893085476651008/the-glass-fortress-prologue-chichevache-lane) and me on tumblr!


	2. The Arrival

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Portions of the text in this chapter are parphrased from CoS Dobby's Warning; GoF The Riddle House; and OotP A Peck of Owls.

Riddle House was large and grand, and it had sat empty for many years. Ivy crawled its face and its gardens were kept up stragglingly where they were kept up at all. But inside, deep at the end of the hall on the second floor, firelight glimmered in the grate in a dark room. 

The door to this room swung open. 

"It's only me," a woman said breathlessly into the gloom. There was no light in the room except the fire, and in the shadow her main distinguishing feature was her height, and her strange, springy gait. As she passed by the hearth, its light flickered over her, showing pale skin stretched tight over a gaunt face and shining black hair.

"How did it go?" asked a young, anxious man from one of the chairs by the fire. The hearth's light illuminated straw colored hair and a face almost as colorless. He was bent over, turning his wand in his hand slowly. "What are you doing?"

The woman had withdrawn her own wand from her sleeve and was tapping it to the window. "I don't want anyone seeing the light," she said, peering out the windows suspiciously. "We remain vulnerable--"

She cast a nervous glance over her shoulder at the second chair by the fire.

A third voice spoke, high and cold, like a blast of wind. "Ever devoted, Bella... But tell me, how did your visit to Emmeline Vance fair?"

"Very well, my lord," the woman called Bella said, turning from the window at last. "The Aurors are thoroughly occupied with the issue, and I am informed that Cornelius Fudge is already insisting that it must relate to the smuggling case she was personally handling. You had no trouble at the border?"

"None," the high voice said. "You have made contact with your associates?"

"A few," Bella said. "Charybdis Trelawney - her brother is a full Auror now - Roderick Rosier, although he primarily wanted to complain about my mother. Ulrike Selwyn..." Satisfied with her work at the windows, she flicked her wand up. Glowing balls of flame emitted, hovering in the air, brilliantly illuminating the room and the occupant of the second chair. 

In size, he might have been a child of five or six. His limbs were spindly and stringy, but capable of holding him, and his pale, translucent skin was marked by healing blemishes and cracks. His face was what made it obvious that he was no child, for it was flat, snake-like, with glowing and pupil-less red eyes.

"My lord," Bella said, turning to him. "Your skin is cracking again--" 

She rushed over to him, wand immediately back out of her sleeve. The fissure down the side of his neck closed reluctantly, seething, as though healing spells were not meant to take effect on something so far from life. She twitched her wand again, vanishing the blood from his skin, so that there was only a line of faint red scabbing, like the rest.

"Bella," he said. "I will survive losing a few drops of blood." She looked as though she might argue, but he went on, "I have regained much health under your care, enough to travel safely. Now. Tell me the state of the Ministry, and we shall plan..."

Many miles away, Harry Potter bolted upright in his bed, his scar searing with pain.

For a moment he did not know where he was. He scrambled to hold onto the details of the dream. There had been a fire, and a woman at a window, and a child...

Harry gagged in panic, rolling over, and fell out of the bed. He struggled to wake the rest of the way, but the dream overwhelmed him. The child had been Voldemort, he knew it. While he could not remember the details of what they had spoken about, the image of Bellatrix leaning over Voldemort like some horrible parody of a mother's affection would not leave his mind.

Lying on the floor with his head on a pile of discarded clothing and one foot in the middle of an overturned stack of books, he tried to think what had woken him. Had it only been the pain from his scar? His pounding heartbeat slowed as he stared at the dark ceiling, slowly coming to believe he was really awake.

Voices came downstairs, and he heard a door open and close and sat upright again. The clock told him it was one in the morning. Sirius's house was often filled with guests these days, and people came through the Floo from the Tonkses, or Grimmauld Place, or occasionally other homes, quite frequently; but they generally did not arrive unannounced in the middle of the night. Harry fished his wand off the bedside table and stood slowly, listening, until he identified the voices as Sirius and - Hermione? 

Harry went to the door but did not open it, only listened to them come up the stairs, trying to wake up enough to understand what was going on.

"--to wake up Harry," Sirius was saying, sounding very tired himself. It had been a month since the ill fated Third Task and his injury. While Sirius no longer had to take ten potions a day, he was still weak and easily exhausted, and should not have been up in the middle of the night. "I'm sure he'll be thrilled to see you tomorrow - is the same guest room as last time alright?"

"Yes, of course that's fine," Hermione was saying, high pitched and anxious. "I'm so sorry to just show up like this, it's just--"

"I understand," Sirius said. His voice sounded funny to Harry, not exactly insincere, but slightly ironic, as though he felt he understood more than just what Hermione had said. "You can stay as long as you like, it's fine... D'you want a lift to see him tomorrow?"

"I'll just - call and check if they're ready," Hermione said hastily. Harry heard the guest room door open and the two of them exchange a few more words about, apparently, Hermione coming to stay with them; then Sirius began retreating heavily down the stairs again. 

He did not consciously decide not to wake Sirius; but nevertheless he found himself waiting until the footsteps had gone all the way down the stairs and around the corner to the basement door. Sirius was already tired enough - Harry could speak to him about this tomorrow...

But he could hear Hermione moving around in the guest room; so he opened his bedroom door when the hall light was off and called, softly, "Hermione?"

"Harry!" Hermione opened the door at once. She was pale and worried, and her hair had been confined into a tight plait that was unraveling at the end and frizzing at the top. Harry could see her school trunk had been dragged to sit, crooked, at the foot of the guest room bed, and that Crookshanks' basket was open on the desk. Crookshanks himself was investigating the pillow, but he turned to look at Harry and raced over to rub against his legs just before Hermione flew over herself to hug him.

"Ow. Hi," Harry said, hugging her tightly back. "What happened, what's wrong?"

"Nothing serious," Hermione said very quickly, "It was just an accident - nothing to do with, you know, Bellatrix--"

Harry's stomach lurched at the reminder of his dream.

"--But I didn't want to be around, you know, underfoot especially if Mum's going to be waiting around in his hospital room and Sirius said I could stay--"

"Who?" Harry said, worried. "Your dad?"

"Yeah," Hermione said anxiously, not looking at Harry. "So I just - asked to stay - I hope you don't mind--"

"It's fine," Harry said, blinking, slowly. His thoughts still felt muddled. "How'd you get here, your parents don't have a Floo, do they?"

"I called a taxi," Hermione said and smiled anxiously at him. "--Are you alright? I was trying not to wake you..."

"You didn't," Harry said, mouth dry. "I had a nightmare - more of a vision, really..."

"Of what?" Hermione asked. She seemed to calm down immensely now that they were no longer discussing her odd arrival; she stepped back and studied him. "You look terrible, Harry - do you want me to go get Sirius?"

"No - he's been ill, I don't want to wake him up again," Harry said quickly. "It was of - of Voldemort, and Bellatrix..."

His scar flared again, as though summoned by his thoughts; he put his hand on it and said, almost without thinking, "He's really pleased, Bella's done well... Everything's going according to plan.."

He shut his mouth, appalled. The nickname Bella had slipped out without any conscious thought, and as much as he would have liked to blame it on hearing the Blacks discuss her, he knew it was from Voldemort that the thought had come.

"Harry?" Hermione said anxiously. Her voice, shrill with fear, brought him back to his body and the house. "Maybe you should sit down. Can I get you anything? Or call anyone?"

Harry sat without protesting. "Maybe just - water?" he said, but regretted it when she left and he was alone in the shadowy guest room. It was a little brighter than the room in Riddle House, but not by much. Curled around his knees, heart pounding, it was hard to believe in the house around him: in Hermione and Sirius, in his own possessions in the room across the hall, in the life he had been living for the past year. 

It wasn't as if Voldemort and the Dursleys belonged to the same world, but the vision still seemed more applicable to his old life, somehow. That boy, shut up in the smallest bedroom and locked in, had not had anyone who cared about him - it had been fair, somehow, for him to carry the weight of the Wizarding world, and the prophecy on which its fate hung--

He was being ridiculous, he thought, listening to Hermione clomp back up the stairs. Ron and Hermione had cared about him then, too. So had Sirius; he just hadn't been able to do anything about it.

"Here," Hermione said, pressing the water into his hand and setting down a packet of biscuits on the nightstand. "You still look really bad, though."

The water helped some. It helped more when Hermione hugged him; he leaned into her and felt - steadier, more real. The world around him seemed for the first time more vivid and solid than the Riddle House, with Hermione's bony shoulder digging into him. But feeling more awake, in some ways, did not help: it allowed him to contemplate not only the disturbing vision, but what it might mean that he was seeing Voldemort, and that he had returned to Britain - if it was real at all. Hermione was right: he needed to tell someone about this, he needed to do it right away. But who?

Narcissa might be useful as his Occlumency instructor, but Harry did not feel certain of her loyalty. It wasn't exactly that he thought she was dying to return to being a Death Eater, but it was difficult to imagine that Narcissa would not be at all conflicted if she heard that her oldest sister had just returned to Britain and was at that very moment with Voldemort and Barty Jr. in a house that must have belonged to Voldemort's muggle family.

"You're going to hate this," he said, slowly realizing that there was someone else who had expertise in mind magic, who knew Voldemort's plans and who was dramatically less likely to be tempted by Bellatrix Lestrange. "But I think we should write to Snape."

Hermione looked up and opened her mouth to reply, but at that moment, an owl tapped on Harry's bedroom window. Hermione paled; Harry jumped, then went to open it. 

He recognized the official Ministry seal, but it was not addressed to him: the name on the envelope was Hermione Granger.

"It's for you," he said, wondering why anyone at the Ministry would be writing to Hermione, particularly at half-past one in the morning.

Hermione whimpered, but took the envelope. She did not seem inclined to explain it to Harry, but only stared blankly at it; finally, Harry said, "Well, what is it, then?" and she shoved it at him.

The writing on the inside had the too-uniform look of a letter recorded automatically with a Dictaquill. Harry had seen the formula inside before. He read,

_Dear Miss Granger,_

_We have received intelligence that a Concussive Charm was used at your place of residence this evening at one minute past eleven this evening, resulting in the injury of a Muggle. As you know, underage witches are not permitted to perform spells outside school (Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery, 1875, Paragraph C.)_

_Due to the severity of this breach, we regret to inform you your presence is required at a disciplinary hearing at the Ministry of Magic at 11 A.M. on August 7th. As this is a first offense, you have not been immediately suspended or expelled, but further spellwork on your part may lead to your expulsion from said school._

_Enjoy your holidays!_

_Yours sincerely,  
Mafalda Hopkirk  
Improper Use of Magic Office  
Ministry of Magic_

Harry looked at Hermione, who had buried her face in her hands while he finished reading the letter.

"What happened?" he said.

"It was an _accident_ ," Hermione moaned, voice slightly muffled by her arms and the bushy hair she had freed from its braid. "I didn't even do an actual spell - it was accidental magic--"

"Yeah, the Ministry can't really tell," Harry said grimly, remembering the occasion on which he had been informed he had performed a Hover Charm after Dobby's interference with a pudding. "The Muggle who was hurt - that was your Dad?" He paused. "Did your parents make you leave?"

Hermione shook her head. "I just - took off - once they were out of the house," she admitted. "I doubt they'll really mind, I used to end up staying with my aunt and uncle a lot. And I don't think they want to see me right now."

"How _bad_ was it?" Harry asked. Hermione had sat down on the bed; he placed the letter on the guest room desk and went to sit beside her.

"I don't know," Hermione said in a small voice. "Not - not _really_ bad, but they were fighting again - they _always_ fight - and Mum threw a plate at him, and it - it scared me, because they don't, usually, not for ages. They got marital counseling last time they split up and it seemed to help. So I kind of - threw them back away from each other, and from me, and Dad hit his head on the corner of the cabinet, and there was blood everywhere - but he was awake and everything, so it wasn't _that_ bad. I - I did it before once when they fought, before we knew it was magic, that was why they left me with my aunt and uncle last time, but nobody from the Ministry came then!"

"Look," Harry said with a great deal more confidence than he actually felt, "You're not going to be expelled." He had no idea how to handle the rest of this information. The Grangers had seemed a bit overprotective but no worse last summer; then again, the Dursleys had always done a wonderful job of convincing neighbors and potential witnesses that Harry was the one who was criminally insane. "We'll go--" He still really did not want to wake up Sirius, and he was hardly in a state to go shout at people at the Ministry now, anyway. "I'll call Andromeda, she's been handling stuff with the Wizengamot so she's over at the Ministry a lot anyway. She'll know what to do." 

There had already been a nasty aside in the _Prophet_ once or twice about Andromeda, as she was positioning herself as an enemy of Fudge; Harry had a feeling that if his best friend had a hearing for using magic to injure a muggle it would rapidly be in the papers if they did not head it off.

"Will she?" Hermione said breathlessly, face warring between anxiety and relief. "Thank you, Harry," she said, and threw her arms around him again.

The Tonkses had a telephone, so Harry tried it first. Tonks, who still hadn't gotten around to getting a flat, picked up first, evidently still awake. To Harry's surprise, she came over along with Andromeda, saying it would be good to have an Auror involved if the Ministry sent someone around for Hermione's wand. (Hermione went even paler at this; her face now resembled chalk.)

"It's going to be fine," Andromeda said soothingly for about the sixth time. She had dispatched Tonks to write to Amelia Bones, who had been around for coffee often to speak to her and Sirius lately as well as being the head of MLE. Then she had gone into their kitchen - very familiar to her by now, as she had been helping out with chores and the shopping since Sirius's injury - and made them all a pot of tea.

"But what if I'm expelled?" Hermione said. She was sitting in a chair with her arms wrapped around her knees. "Or - or arrested for muggle baiting--"

"You're not going to be expelled," Andromeda said firmly. "You're allowed to use magic for self defense, and your parents throwing plates around definitely qualifies. Even the Wizengamot will admit it with muggle parents. When you go to this hearing--"

"There isn't going to be a hearing," Amelia Bones said in the doorway to the kitchen, making them all jump. "--Tonks let me in. Thanks for the note, Andy. Hopkirk's got a love for smacking people with the yardstick of the law that gets on everyone's nerves, I just dropped her a note telling her to bugger off, MLE's dropped the charges." She rolled her eyes.

"Oh," Hermione said, looking both intimidated and deeply relieved. "Thank you--"

"No trouble, Miss," Amelia said, nodding. "If you weren't from a muggle family nobody would have so much as noticed the damn spell."

"Cup of tea before you go, then?" Andromeda asked, and suppressed a yawn. "While you're here, I wanted to have a word with you about that vote scheduled for Monday - you two, go up to bed, it's late enough. Dora, you too, you have work in the morning. I'm surprised Sirius isn't up, but then he's on sleeping potions..."

They climbed the stairs back up slowly. In the excitement of the citation, Harry had totally forgotten about his dream, but the shadowy staircase brought it back. Hermione, too, asked after it once they had by mutual accord went to sit in her room; she seemed almost relieved to have an excuse to worry about him instead, and also asked why he had originally wanted to write to Snape. He repeated the details of the vision fumblingly, including that Bellatrix and Barty Crouch had been there, the few details he had seen of the room and, trying not to picture it, what he had seen of Voldemort's condition.

"--I only remember some of what they were talking about, though," he said. "Bellatrix was talking about something he ordered her to do - killing someone..."

"Harry, do you know who it was?" Hermione said, anxious again.

"I don't know. And I think it was something she'd already done, not a plan," he said, feeling ill. "She was telling Voldemort that it went well, and that she'd seen someone else, or maybe a few people, and he was really pleased with her... I don't remember who they were, though," he said. "And then I woke up and my scar was on fire."

"Well," Hermione said, grimly getting up and going to her school trunk to get parchment. "If you want to write to Professor Snape, we'll write to Professor Snape."

It took a while to figure out how to put the dream into words that made sense, could be sent through the post, and did not sound ridiculous. Staring at the final draft, Harry couldn't help but feel that Snape was going to sneer and laugh, but, he thought, at least he would have done something about the dream. The sense of pounding urgency was still in his head. Finally, he let Hermione talk him into sealing the letter and sending it off with Hedwig immediately instead of waiting for sunrise.

There was no way he would get back to sleep after that, and while he tried to convince her, Hermione said there if she tried she would undoubtedly have nightmares about Voldemort personally expelling her from Hogwarts. Instead they went downstairs into the sitting room, which was deserted again. There, they got out Scrabble, which Hermione beat him at even more thoroughly than usual, and an ordinary deck of playing cards, it being rather too early in the morning for Exploding Snap.

Harry had planned vaguely to tell Sirius in the morning. But Sirius was obviously distracted by the issue with the hearing that wasn't, which he had been filled in on by the time they were all at breakfast, and Harry did not want to give him something else to worry about, too. Hermione shot him several anxious looks, but seemed to feel essentially similar. But it became obvious to Harry that there had been a rather serious downside to his reluctance to worry Sirius more when the doorbell rang a little after lunch. A moment later, Sirius answered the door, and shortly thereafter practically shrieked, " _Snape?_ "

"Oh _no_ ," Hermione said, bolting upright with a rather pointed glare at Harry.  
He dashed downstairs in the middle of Snape working up a really good insult. "Sir," he said breathlessly, interrupting. "Sorry, I didn't think you'd answer me in person--"

Snape's eyebrows crawled up his forehead. "Given the urgency of the manner I thought I had better come."

"Urgency?" Sirius said. "Does this have to do with Hermione...?"

Snape looked as though a moderately dear fantasy had just come true. "Did Potter not tell you?" he said gleefully. "Ah, but perhaps he feels that _responsibility_ is not--"

"I didn't know whether it was important," Harry said very firmly, rather amazed that he had interrupted Snape twice in thirty seconds and was not yet a smoking pile of ashes or turned into a toad. "And it kind of slipped my mind with the stuff with Hermione, sorry Sirius. Please come in, Professor," he said, backing up so that Sirius had to move or be stepped on, and got Snape into the house without a fight. 

Hermione was ringing her hands behind him, glancing between Sirius and Snape. Sensing imminent disaster, Harry said, "Have you had lunch yet, sir? 'Mione, do you remember if there were leftovers--"

"I've no desire to be poisoned, Potter, or to find out what the residents of this household consider edible food," Snape said, sweeping them all with a skeptical eye. "Your collective ineptitude in Potions is hardly encouraging."

"Hermione got over ninety percent on your final exam," Harry said, losing his temper at last; she had had a bad enough night. "And all you have to say is no, sir. Look, let's talk about it in the back garden, shall we? It's enchanted against eavesdropping from outside," he said, and went quickly, hoping Snape would feel a need to follow him in order to argue.

Professor Snape finally desisted, and although Sirius followed them out against Harry's hopes, once he brought up the dream both of them were distracted quickly. He did his best to describe the parts he remembered: the house, Bellatrix, Voldemort's condition, the bits of the conversation he recalled, and the way his scar had felt when he woke up. Realizing he was not sure either Snape or Sirius would be aware, he finished, "And the only time my scar's hurt before was when I was around Professor Quirrell while he was possessed, but I don't think Voldemort was exactly in the house then, was he?"

"I'd have noticed it in the house's warding," Sirius said.

" _That_ remains to be seen," Snape said insultingly, but added, "If he had broken into the house undoubtedly he would have attempted murder again, and we would have been alerted. No, I agree that he was most likely several hundred miles away at the time. I do not know where Riddle House is located, and the description is not distinct, but the name may provide assistance in determining that." He frowned into the ivy covering the fence. 

"Then you agree it wasn't just a dream, sir?" Harry asked, feeling almost weak with relief that he was not going to have to argue with Snape or explain the odd sense of urgency that kept flaring through his exhaustion.

"We know that you have some talent for Legilimency by nature from your Occlumency lessons," Snape began. "We know that you have some unknown connection to the Dark Lord which manifests through pain in your scar. We know that Bellatrix Lestrange, freed from Azkaban, most likely departed Britain in order to locate her master at the beginning of the summer when Narcissa was - ah - recovered, accompanied by Barty Crouch Jr. Additionally, I happen to recognize the physical description you gave of the Dark Lord's state, and I do not believe that the Black library contains a copy of _A Compendium of Life Magicks_...?" 

He looked inquiringly at Sirius, who frowned and shook his head. "I don't think so. I remember Bellatrix complaining she had to borrow the Lestranges' in the seventies. Immortality isn't really an interest of the family."

This, Harry thought, was probably the first civil exchange the two of them had ever had.

"Therefore while it is plausible that you might have a nightmare about Bellatrix resurrecting the Dark Lord, it is less plausible that you would make up those particular details, or that your scar would suddenly flare at the same time by coincidence. So, yes, I believe we may assume that the vision was genuine." Snape frowned. "Which is cause for another concern."

"Concern?" Sirius said. "I mean, I'm sure it's going to be upsetting, but if Harry's having visions about Voldemort--"

"I misspoke when I used Potter's word, 'vision," Snape said. "I do not believe this is a manifestation of talent for divination - unless you have had other true visions, Potter? Professor Trelawney's class is hardly likely to manifest them, but other dreams or flashes...?" 

Harry shook his head and Snape continued, "So most likely Potter did not manifest farsight, but rather viewed the Dark Lord's mind as the scene occurred. Being an Occlumens, you will understand the concerns," he said to Sirius, who frowned severely and nodded, looking as though he wished he did not have to agree.

"What concerns?" Harry said. "And hang on, if I was watching Voldemort's mind, why didn't I see it from his perspective?"

"You recall," Snape said, sounding resigned, "That when we worked on the matter together, and you with Narcissa, you often saw memories - yours, mine or hers - from an external perspective. It is not always clear whether this is a manifestation of farsight in connection with Legilimency or the human mind's tendency to edit both visual information and memories, but it is common, and less commonly can occur with contemporary viewing of the mind. Does that answer your question?"

"Yeah," Harry said, and without thinking, "Why can't you explain Potions like that in class?"

Snape raised his eyebrows. "If you did the reading, I would not _have_ to, Potter." Before Harry could argue that he did, he went on, "As for the concerns I alluded to, I hope you have not totally forgotten that we worked last term on presenting altered memories to a Legilimens. 

"If the Dark Lord becomes aware you are seeing into his mind, he may plant false information or visions - I see that you are dying to protest that you will not take his word, but imagine if he were to implant a vision of torturing someone you cared about, and tell me you would not rush off to rescue them the way you rushed after Miss Weasley, or the Philosopher's Stone. We will have to work rather seriously on controlling your Legilimency if it is manifesting in this way, Potter."

"So I'm going to have more extra lessons with you," Harry said, resigned. He knew without asking that this was not information they could trust Narcissa with, so it would only be Snape.

"Indeed. I will notify you when I have determined where they will best fit in my schedule," Snape said, rose, and strode off to the back gate.

"Well," Sirius said, heavily, and rubbed his face with his hand.

Harry's stomach lurched. He looked up nervously.

Sirius smiled at him, although Harry could see discomfort behind it. "I'm not mad," he said. "Just - give me some warning next time, yeah?"

"Yeah," Harry said hastily. "I really didn't know he was going to just show up--"

"It's _fine_ , Harry," Sirius said, then swallowed. More evenly, he said, "I'm going to call Andromeda if that's alright; she should know if Bella's back in the country. Okay?"

"Yeah, of course," Harry said, and Sirius got up.

Andromeda came back over a few minutes later; Sirius exchanged a quick word with her and then clomped back down to the basement, saying he was tired and wanted to lie down. Hermione looked after him anxiously, and Harry tried not to worry too much; he suspected Sirius was still upset about Snape's appearance when he was vulnerable, but as a rule he did not explode at Harry in the way that the Dursleys or, say, Snape did, only went to be alone when he was upset. And Harry supposed that after more than ten years with the dementors, Sirius was entitled to be a bit moody.

"What's this about a vision?" Andromeda asked before he could get too wrapped up in his own head. She had settled at the dining room table while Sirius went downstairs, and was fiddling with the tea set Sirius had brought out first. "Everything should be sorted out, Hermione, Amelia got an answer from Hopkirk not long ago and Flooed me."

"Thank you," Hermione said, looking more poised than earlier, while Harry sat down and tried to gather his thoughts. He summarized the dream in as neutral detail as he could, and then added Snape's conclusions. "--So Sirius said we should tell you Bellatrix is back in Britain," he finished. "In case she attacks you or something, I suppose."

Andromeda looked thoughtful. "It's good to know. Snape is going to teach you to control Legilimency?"

"Yeah, why?" Harry said.

"Well. I'm sorry to say that he's almost certain to be more effective than I am, because I never spent a lot of time studying it. But Legilimency as a natural talent runs in our family aside from Narcissa's learned style, and it sounds like that's what's going on with you. So if you'd like some personal experience to go with his inevitable ranting, feel free to write to me, alright?"

"Yeah, sure!" Harry said, with great relief.

The other person he had to discuss the vision with that day, and almost the most awkward one, was Druella Rosier.

Her permanent entrance to Sirius's revived Black family had been the polar opposite of Narcissa's. Andromeda had invited Sirius and Harry over for dinner with her family one day and casually welcomed her mother through the Floo shortly after they arrived. 

"Aunt Dru?" Sirius had said, questioningly.

Druella, who was wearing emerald silk and had her hair braided into a crown, had turned from studying a photograph Andromeda had recently put up of herself with Narcissa and Sirius. "Oh, yes, I've been speaking to Andromeda since 1974 when Dora was born," she said with a mildly apologetic air, as though Sirius had been left out of a round of drinks by mistake. "I had to keep it a secret, of course, you know what the Rosiers are like as a House. I was hoping you'd take me back, if you wouldn't mind? My little brother has no right to take offense to me obeying your policy, and he knows you need more administrators."

Sirius had looked at his aunt, then at Andromeda; then he said, "Yeah. Sure," in a slightly strangled tone. 

But one of the first things Druella had done was not administration at all; it was continuing and fleshing out Harry's lessons from Cassiopeia's portrait. Apparently the Rosiers taught certain skills like magic detection or sight in the teen years instead of early childhood, so she had a better idea of how to do it with Harry. She had also been working as her elderly and distinguished mother's research assistant since she had left her children's father, Cygnus Black, late in the war, and subsequently recovered from thirty years of hard alcoholism. ("Bella asked me repeatedly to move in with them but you can presumably guess why I refused," Druella had told Harry dryly.)

Druella was not a bad teacher, but she was nearly or possibly more disconcerting than Cassiopeia's portrait. Her sense of humor ranged from dry to vile to appallingly violent, and she had a disconcerting habit of referencing arguments she had had with Voldemort, being relatively sheltered by her status as his unofficial mother-in-law. She could also quote Monty Python and count muggle change perfectly well, having been vanishing from pureblood society to visit her middle daughter for two decades.

She was also an exceptional duelist, although she was the first to admit that this skill had been tested almost entirely in controlled conditions like the dueling ring and she hadn't the faintest idea how she'd do on an actual battlefield. But she had been one of Bellatrix Lestrange's early teachers - not to mention Narcissa and Andromeda - and it was quite obvious that she had been a major influence. While Amelia Bones relied on her natural power and ability to cast difficult magic, and Sirius had creativity, the Black magical sight and obscure family traditions going for him, Druella was both tactically brilliant and vicious. Harry felt like he learned more in a week of lessons with her than he had in months before; and she said that she thought he had a good natural command of her style, although he was not sure if this was complimentary or troubling.

That day she came over in the afternoon while Sirius was resting in the basement and listened gravely to Harry's account of his vision. When he was finished she remarked, simply, "That does sound like Bella."

"So - what do you think?" Harry asked after a long silence.

Druella gave a tiny shrug. "Legilimency is not a talent of mine, for all my daughters have it," she said, slowly. "I would say that Severus Snape's advice is likely to fare you well there. I do recognize the ritual he referred to; we may discuss it if you are interested but I rather believe you aren't. As for Voldemort's return, we will prepare you as well as we can, as quickly as we can; but we were doing that anyway." She studied him then with her piercing blue eyes, and said quietly, "If no one has told you - and the Blacks often forget it's a concern for lesser mortals like us - it's alright to be afraid."

Sirius re-emerged in time for dinner and was his usual self again, although he gave Harry an extra hug or two, perhaps in apology for earlier. The conversation was dominated by Harry's birthday in a few days, and with unfamiliar questions like what sort of cake he'd like and what he wanted for dinner. He muddled through this as well as he could, grateful to have Hermione present to assist him when he went totally blank.

Harry had forgone a large party, in part because of discomfort but primarily for security reasons, but Ron would be coming via Floo, and there were various relatives who filtered in on the day itself in the afternoon. Harry mused at how strange it was to have acquired so many; and also that even the more unpleasant relations regarded him as someone they had to be polite to, rather than acting like Aunt Marge. 

In addition to Andromeda, Ted and Tonks, Narcissa came over with Draco from Grimmauld Place. And with Narcissa came another Black relation who had rejoined the family recently: Sirius's aunt Lucretia.

After all of their campaigning to contact Lucretia Black last term, she had been unexpectedly reclaimed by chance at the beginning of the summer. Apparently Muriel Prewett had had a heart attack, and Lucretia had owled Narcissa after discovering the body. This coincidence was rather sketchy and possibly no coincidence at all. Andromeda had asked if it really _mattered_ if Lucretia had murdered her when the family had kept her wand from her for decades, and Sirius had said that it probably didn't as long as no one else dropped dead in her vicinity and let the matter stand. She had moved in with Narcissa at Grimmauld Place at once, and largely avoided everyone else.

Hermione and Draco became quickly occupied arguing about their summer Arithmancy homework, which both of them had had finished for weeks but kept going over anyway, so Harry wandered away, hoping Ron would arrive soon. Mrs. Weasley obviously had not forgiven Sirius and Andromeda for the disastrous Easter dinner, and while she was still polite to Harry, had been openly suspicious of Sirius as a responsible adult when he last saw her. He was still somewhat afraid to find out Ron's permission to come had been revoked.

He found Druella, Andromeda and Sirius sitting together in the back garden and went over. "--still going alright in the Wizengamot, Andy?" Sirius was asking as Harry pulled up a chair.

"Yes, I think so," Andromeda said, shuffling papers that had been brought out and set on the garden table. "Hermione's been a great help the last two days, thank you for suggesting I ask her if she'd like to help. We may have to hire her as an official intern; I'm actually progressing on paperwork now instead of just treading water. Although I think you're going to need to make a brief appearance in public soon anyway, because people keep coming up and asking me if you're dead--"

" _Dead?_ " Harry said.

"He hasn't been seen publicly since he was in St. Mungo's after Crouch cursed him," Druella said. "I've been getting questions, too; my sister deigned to speak to me the other day to ask if you or your daughter were expected to inherit now, if anything should happen to Sirius, or if it would be Narcissa."

"I _signed_ that marriage contract we filed for her," Sirius said. "That was the entire point."

"Signatures aren't so hard to forge," Druella said. "And the general feeling is that we might have finally filed a contract stating that Andromeda remains a Black as a married woman more than twenty years after the fact precisely so that she could be publicly acknowledged as a member of the family for a few weeks before we announce you succumbed tragically to your injuries."

Sirius groaned. "I still can't go to anything where I have to stand for long," he said, casting a frustrated look at the heavy oak walking stick leaning against the table by his side. It had been covered almost entirely in muggle stickers by the time Sirius had been home for three days.

"We'd better get you a more dignified looking stick, too," Druella said.

Sirius cast about obviously for a change of subject. "So _aside_ from rumors of my demise, any interesting gossip?" he said to Andromeda. "Or is it the same bore it always was?"

"Both, really." Andromeda tucked her hair behind her ears. "Fudge is _still_ stalling on ending the 1979 freeze on raising new families to Houses, so the crowd is much more heavily Ministry witches and wizards now. They are a little more inclined to give me the time of day than most of the old families, but only until they find out I don't agree with Fudge's policy choices. That's the real problem, it makes it impossible to get anything through without him personally rubber stamping it."

"I thought they were supposed to be appointed by the Departments precisely to avoid that issue?" Druella pursed her lips.

"Well, they're selected by the Department Heads in a rotation, but it's an open secret that anyone who goes too far against Fudge is going to end up fired after the vote. I still think we have a good shot at leading any resistance because it's now indisputable public fact that Fudge ordered our Head of House Kissed for escaping Azkaban when he was innocent of the crimes he was sentenced for and never even tried--"

Sirius winced. Harry scooted his chair a little closer to him. 

"--But it's going to take a few appointees willing to sacrifice their careers for the sake of it." Andromeda paused. "We might have a shot, though; Amelia Bones has been making some interesting choices. I heard she was gearing up to try to take Fudge's job--"

"Madam Bones _hates_ politics," Druella objected.

"--Which I'd heard as well, so I asked her when she was over here a few days ago, and she confirmed it. She also," Andromeda raised her eyebrows, "Told me to tell my sister that she was right."

"You don't think Bella...?" Sirius said.

"Um," Harry said, joining the conversation reluctantly; whenever politics came up at the table he felt he was treading water desperately, quite a feat when he had never learned to swim. "I think she meant Narcissa, actually. Last spring I went to that tea with them, and Narcissa told her that she would testify against Lucius for being a Death Eater if Amelia got someone in the Minister's chair who'd listen. She suggested Amelia could take Fudge's job, and when Amelia said she hated politics, Narcissa said that she had only herself to blame for what happened without her, then."

Druella _hmm_ 'd thoughtfully. "Did she? I wouldn't have expected that to work on Madam Bones, but perhaps the inaction is getting to her, as well."

Not too much later, Ron finally arrived. Harry happily abandoned the discussion of who was currently appointed to Wizengamot seats to greet him. It was a pity that, being in London instead of the Burrow, they couldn't play Quidditch anymore, and they weren't allowed out without an adult to walk around the neighborhood since Bellatrix's escape; but there was always Exploding Snap, and news of the rest of the Weasleys. It was also nice to have at least one friend whose idea of a good time wasn't comparing summer homework.

Unusually for any time when the Blacks were all in the same room, dinner went smoothly; the adults all seemed to be very intent on making sure Harry was allowed to enjoy his birthday for once. There was a large chocolate cake with icing Quidditch balls on the surface that zoomed across the top of the cake until eaten, and - almost uncomfortably for Harry, who wasn't used to people making a fuss over him - presents. 

Several of them were of a theme. Sirius had bought him a wand holster meant for dueling, while Narcissa gave him a boot sheathe meant for a knife, and Andromeda and Tonks went in together on a knife they said was made to hold enchantments cast by the owner particularly well. Ted had bought him a large assortment of sweets, and Ron a package of Dr. Filibuster's Fireworks, while Hermione, as usual, had given him a book - this time a weighty tome on Defense theory that would be very interesting if Harry understood any of it. 

Draco, somewhat to Harry's surprise, bought him a beautifully painted ink pot shaped like a snowy owl; he had seen the cat-shaped one Harry had begun using occasionally from his mother's things. Lucretia and Druella, who Harry had expected gifts from even less, both bought him clothing. Druella had bought him a cloak with charms on it that could be activated or lowered to reduce attention; he had a feeling Lucretia's gift of several pieces of male jewelry was meant as a hint about his wardrobe being inappropriate.

They checked with Sirius to confirm that the protective charms against muggle notice on the garden went up high enough, then went out back to set off some of the fireworks. Ron was edgy around Draco, but they had been getting along relatively well by the end of last term and remained civil now. So things had gone very well, in Harry's opinion, by the time Ron went back through the Floo that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Liked this? [Find it](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/628517231585869824/the-glass-fortress-chpt-1-the-arrival), and me, on tumblr!
> 
> For a complete account of places in canon where Hermione's parents are conspicuously absent or she is inexplicably away from home for the entire year, see [this essay](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/626830726168444928/did-the-grangers-commit-child-abandonment-or). In canon we never receive an explanation for why she comes to the Burrow or Grimmauld Place immediately after summer term ends, and Harry doesn't have any energy to worry about anyone else's home life; but given that she chose Sirius here for a few reasons, he was going to be present for her arrival, so I had to make up something.
> 
> Regarding the perspective of Harry's visions, while in OotP a point is made of him seeing from Nagini's POV he initially has visions in third person in GoF where he can see both Nagini and Voldemort (or at least an object concealing Voldemort). In particular from The Scar, quote, "There had been a snake on a hearth rug... All Harry knew was that at the moment when Voldemort's chair had swung around, and he, Harry, had seen what was sitting in it..." and from The Dream, quote, "...into a chair with its back to him... There were two dark shapes on the floor beside the chair... One was a huge snake... a cold, high-pitched voice from the depths of the chair..."


	3. A Black Affair

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're wondering how many jokes I can make about "black" in the chapter titles, the answer is pretty much "infinite."

Unfortunately once the guests had left, Harry no longer had anything to distract him from his vision, and he kept thinking about Bellatrix Lestrange.

This was not itself odd, even aside from the dream, as she was an escaped convict who might well want to kill him personally. She had murdered Bartemius Crouch Sr. earlier that summer, and had been able to directly as a result of Harry Stunning him, never mind that Crouch had been trying to kill him and Sirius and Harry had thought Bellatrix was her sister Andromeda. Everyone said she was certain to find a way to restore Voldemort to full strength very soon, plunging the Wizarding world back into war, and speeding Harry along to meet the prophecy that said he was destined to kill Voldemort - or to be killed by him. If Harry's vision had been correct, she was already well on her way towards this goal.

None of this was what he was dwelling on, though he made an honest effort to worry about those things instead. But now that he had been reminded of her, his thoughts continued returning to when Bellatrix had come to the house that summer with Narcissa in tow.

Sirius hadn't fought her, of course. Sirius could now stay out of bed for a few hours at a time, but this was a recent victory and that early in the summer he had still been very fragile indeed. He couldn't have won a fight with Crookshanks, let alone Bellatrix Lestrange. And Harry did not feel it was worth questioning Bellatrix returning Narcissa, who had been comatose as a result of Crouch's spell and was her little sister, even if she had betrayed Voldemort's cause by leaving Lucius Malfoy.

There were two things Harry kept thinking about: the few words Bellatrix and Sirius had exchanged, and the fact that they had kissed.

Finally, he gave up on reading the Defense book Hermione had gotten him and went to find Sirius. Harry had thought he had learned last term to ask Sirius about his history instead of obsessing, when Dumbledore had tried to cause a rift between them - if indeed he had been trying - with Pensieve memories of the House of Black. He obviously had forgotten again up until now.

Sirius was downstairs in his bedroom, resting again and paging through a book, but he closed it as soon as Harry came down.

"Can I ask you something?" Harry said awkwardly, sitting on the edge of the bed next to him. He still wasn't entirely certain how this sort of conversation was supposed to work. He'd had a lot of practice at Hogwarts last year, but somehow it seemed tied to Sirius's old quarters as Defense professor; being at their own house, alone again, made everything almost as difficult as last summer.

"Sure, Harry," Sirius said. "What's wrong?"

"It's... Probably private," Harry said, trying to gather his thoughts. "It's about your cousin." He looked away, and realized that Crookshanks had followed him downstairs; he was presently stalking a small spider across the floor.

Sirius studied him for a moment while Harry watched Crookshanks. "I suppose I don't need to ask which one."

"No," Harry said. "When she brought Narcissa home…"

"Ah," Sirius said. "I wondered if you would ask about that."

"Yes. You said--" It was easier to ask about this part than the kiss, "That it couldn't be like…"

"Like before," Sirius finished quietly. "Yes. I..." He rubbed his temples. "Harry, you have a right to know this. I'm afraid it won't do any favors for your opinion of me, but... I was referring to the last war. You know I was a member of Dumbledore's forces, and I fought Voldemort, of course--"

"Of course," Harry said, a little indignantly.

"I also," Sirius said heavily, "Spent about a year sleeping with Bellatrix."

The conversation crashed to a heavy halt.

" _Why?_ " Harry said, then reconsidered rapidly whether he wanted to hear the answer. "What year?" 

It wasn't even Bellatrix the Death Eater who was coming into his mind; it was the mental image of Sirius in the Wizengamot in the Pensieve, nine years old and holding his adult cousin's hand. Had Bellatrix - made him do it, like his grandfather, or manipulated him somehow? But then why would Sirius have snuck around to hide it? Had it been before he ran away?

Crookshanks chirped; Harry twisted to look at him, and he leapt into Harry's lap the next moment. Harry took a deep breath and scratched at the base of Crookshanks's skull. His weight was comforting.

"Summer 1978 to 1979, the year after I graduated. I broke it off when Reggie died." Sirius's eyes were distant. "I'd thought... Well, I thought I was talking her around - stupid of me, knowing how far in she was, but it's hard not to be optimistic about family. And she was the only one speaking to me at the time - besides Andy, obviously." Sirius laughed harshly. "But when she got Reggie killed and wouldn't even say she disagreed with his execution..."

"Why would you _want_ to - have sex with her?" Harry said fumblingly. "I mean, that makes sense, I can sort of see why you would try to talk her into leaving Voldemort." He had to imagine Ron or Hermione as opposed to the Dursleys, but once he did he could readily see how hard it would be to give them up for unreachable. "But didn't she practically raise you? And you said, when we talked about you being engaged, that you didn't have feelings for her."

"It's neater that way," Sirius said. He cast a longing look over Harry's head towards a cupboard Harry knew had liquor in it, but didn't get up from bed. "And I mean, when we were engaged I didn't... I'm not even sure I'd say I had them when we were having the affair, but the thing was... 

"This is mostly a guess on my part, you understand, because we didn't discuss it directly, but I picked some things up from what she said and didn't say. Voldemort didn't care about her sexual fidelity, she was clear about that, and of course he knew about our broken engagement. The impression I got was that she felt it was safe to do it - sneak around with me, talk to me at all - if she was passing it off as an affair, just about the sex; her loyalties wouldn't come into question the way they would if she was friends with a member of the Order or openly treated me as family after I was disowned for my politics. And he... knew he was incapable of giving her what she needed from a lover, the emotional care, and he wanted her functional enough to fight, so he didn't mind if she sought it out elsewhere. I had the impression he might have actually encouraged her to. And I wanted to see her, enough to... If we had to pretend it was sexual, even between _us_ , I was willing to do it."

Harry wondered what the Order was, but he could more or less guess from context. "That's... really messed up," he said quietly.

"You are not wrong," Sirius said, scrubbing a hand over his head and shoving his hair back from his face. "Anyway, I broke up with her in summer of 1979. She... Kept writing to me until I got arrested, actually, but I burned them after the first couple, so I don't know exactly what she said. But in Azkaban it was difficult to stay apart when there was so little other comfort, and anyone who'd been on our side thought I was a traitor."

"There are people on our side in Azkaban?" Harry said, startled.

Sirius laughed darkly. "Of course there are, Harry. There are always innocent people in Azkaban, and people who break the stupidest laws. More to the point, most of us were vigilantes. The Ministry overlooked a lot from the people fighting Voldemort, but there were some things they felt were too much of a risk to them, and some things that were too public."

They sat in silence for a few moments after that revelation.

Finally Harry said, "So that's what you meant? That you weren't going to go back to sleeping with her, or..."

"Talking to her like in prison, yeah. It was bad enough before, don't get me wrong. I'm not proud of it. But at least it was a generalized sort of hatred and attempted murder." Sirius's smile was lopsided. "I was in as much danger as anyone else on our side, so I figured my safety was mine to risk, and it was worth it if I _did_ manage to talk her into leaving the war. Which it still would be, she's Voldemort's heaviest single hitter, but I don't... 

"I'm not stupid enough to hold out hope for Bellatrix anymore. I love her - I always will - but she made her choices a long time ago."

Harry asked slowly, "Then why did you kiss her? To say goodbye?"

Sirius looked surprised. "Yes, I suppose," he said, and shrugged again. "It's not as sexual a gesture in our world as it is in the muggle world, not among traditional society. I forget sometimes that you wouldn't know these things the way you would if you grew up with James. People kiss - on the lips - sometimes on oaths, or when greeting each other in church, and sometimes close family members will do it." 

For a moment he seemed to be done, but then he added, "I won't say it had nothing to do with sleeping together before, it would be a ridiculous claim, but I don't think she's going to take it as a proposition any more than she would if I had hugged her. It was more..." He looked away. "Maybe I'm lying when I say I've given up on her; I _want_ her to come back to the House, on some level. And kissing her meant more, in those terms."

"Oh," Harry said. "Er - excuse me," he added, and fled upstairs.

He wanted to talk to Hermione about it, but at the same time he had no idea how he would explain, and it would be a rather serious violation of Sirius's privacy, so in the end he only stewed quietly for the evening. He knew he wasn't angry with Sirius exactly; he just didn't know what to think about it.

The next morning was drizzling and gray. Harry lay in bed for a while after waking, watching the sun refuse to emerge, and mused on the strangeness of it: no class, no chores, no Dursleys, only his room with the Quidditch posters Sirius had bought him and his school books and the Firebolt laid out on the top of his trunk. He wondered if he would ever get used to it.

Eventually he got hungry enough to get up. Hedwig, perched on the wardrobe, hooted softly and he said good morning to her and fed her a few owl treats before starting downstairs. He had been hearing voices and footsteps downstairs for perhaps half an hour and knew there were people over, but it became obvious as he came down that this wasn't the usual shuffle of people between Grimmauld Place, the Tonkses' and Sirius's house.

Sirius, Druella and Narcissa were seated at the table, huddled around a newspaper. Andromeda was stirring bacon on the stove, glancing over at them every few minutes. Hermione was trying to set the table around them and frequently having to dodge, or else clear her throat pointedly so that someone would take an elbow or foot out of the way, while Draco perched on a chair at the other end, absently shredding his toast.

"Morning," Harry said at the doorway. Draco, who was closest but had his back to the door, jumped wildly and elbowed his plate off the floor. It hit the floor with a loud crash. Draco flinched again.

"Never mind, I'll get you another," Andromeda said, twitching her wand from her sleeve to mend the plate. "Morning, Harry, do you want anything?"

"Would you like help?" Harry asked, accepting several pieces of bacon and a slice of toast, handing a second over to Draco at the table. "I can get the eggs. What happened?"

"Emmeline Vance has been murdered," Narcissa said, skimming the newspaper over her mother's shoulder. "The Assistant Head Auror."

Harry's stomach lurched. The moment he heard the name, recognition flashed, and he knew this was who Bellatrix had discussed killing in his vision.

"I would have put my money on Madam Bones first," Druella said. "Even more so with her campaign."

"Were Fudge's opponent anyone else, it would have been," Narcissa said, "But as it happens Madam Bones beat Bella - and most of her team - in a duel when the Dark Lord sent her to clean up the leftovers from the infamous Bones raid, and that was before Bella had twelve years in Azkaban and Madam Bones fifteen more of practice. I imagine he's planning to kill _her_ himself."

"Oh." Harry's mouth was suddenly horribly dry, and his stomach queasy. He forced down the rest of the bacon anyway and went to get eggs from the fridge. "How do you all take your eggs?"

"You know, this family possesses not one but _three_ house elves," Druella said.

"Who are wonderful in a magical kitchen but would probably set this one on fire," Sirius pointed out.

"Who can Apparate," Narcissa said witheringly.

"Two of which are employed and not possessed," Hermione said heatedly. "And Kreacher--"

"Would fall over dead on the spot if you freed him, not that that wouldn't be a momentously happy occasion," Sirius said.

"Children," Druella said, drumming her fingers on the table and eyeing Sirius in disapproval.

"It's not house elves in general, it's Kreacher that's foul," Andromeda said, starting another batch of bacon. "Anyway I'm not cooking because I have a burning desire to serve you all, I'm cooking because I can't stay still and someone might as well eat it. I imagine Harry feels the same."

"Yeah, that," Harry said, "So how do you take your eggs, everyone?"

He sat down to read the article once the rest of breakfast was ready to serve; conveniently by now the three who had been reading the paper before were finished and had cast it off to argue in heated tones about the political implications of the murder. 

At the top of the page was a picture of a stately witch in emerald green robes, chin lifted high, serenely regarding the camera. The headline read, "ASSISTANT HEAD AUROR VANCE MURDERED IN HOME." Harry swallowed and began to read. 

It seemed that Emmeline Vance had been found dead early Friday morning, and this information had only been released to the papers Monday. The article was vague on the nature of the injuries that had killed her, but stated that there had been signs of a struggle and Dark magic used in the dwelling, and a large amount of damage to the house, which led the _Prophet_ to speculate it might have taken multiple attackers to subdue her.

"Of course, Bella can do plenty of damage all by herself," Sirius said, looking over Harry's shoulder.

"Barty might have been with her," Narcissa pointed out.

"I doubt it, not to take out one witch," Druella said. "Vance was a decent hand with a wand but hardly a notable duelist, and since Voldemort most likely still isn't embodied, I doubt he wanted them both gone at once on a hit."

"How do you figure that?" Harry asked. 

"It takes more than a few weeks to - well, there are a few resurrection rituals that might be doable, but they'd all be fairly inferior quality and we're assuming that he's going to want it done as well as possible," Sirius said.

"That, and Narcissa hasn't been summoned," Druella said. "We assume that he'll want to collect his Death Eaters once he's embodied, and see who is willing to return. It's my understanding that he is able to call a specific individual but not to do a mass call excluding only one or two, so we should know that much."

Harry and Hermione looked as one at Narcissa, who was gripping her fork and knife with white knuckles, staring with steely eyes down at her plate.

"Anyway, the Vance family are Black vassals and tenants, even if Emmeline herself didn't live on our property anymore," Andromeda said, sighing. "Someone had better go call on her parents and find out if the rest of her family's back in the country, and if they need anything..."

"We're _not_ collecting the burial tithe, not now," Sirius said, sounding appalled.

"No, but we do need to tell them it's been waived," Andromeda said. "And what with Emmeline being murdered as an Auror we would want to offer to pay for the funeral even if a daughter of the House hadn't killed her."

A few days later, Harry, Hermione and Draco got ready to go with Sirius, Andromeda and Ted to what Sirius told them was the only traditional cathedral and largest magical church in Britain. Narcissa and Druella were dealing with financial and funerary arrangements, while Tonks was already there on duty; any Auror, Sirius quietly told them, would have an honor guard at the funeral and for the pallbearers, and Emmeline Vance had been a murdered officer. At least Sirius was now up to explaining things; he had been extremely drunk the night after the murder was announced in the papers, and had not come out of the basement for most of the next day. 

While he was still recovering from the injuries Crouch had inflicted, he had admitted earlier in the summer that he had taken the job at Hogwarts in the first place to make sure he would have to eat regularly and see other people every day. In addition to being overwhelmed by his official responsibilities as the Black family's only remaining representative then, he had not been certain he would be able to handle months of work by himself. Harry could not help worrying about this, since he would be returning to school soon; on the other hand, Andromeda, Ted, Narcissa and Druella were all involved, and he knew they checked on Sirius frequently even now.

Harry had never been to any funeral before and had little idea what to expect. He was grateful that he had a few options to choose from beyond his dress robes for casual magical clothing, now, since Sirius told him to wear something plain and dark; he had a set of dark blue robes that passed inspection. Sirius and Ted both wore simple black robes, while Andromeda had on a black veil over her robes similar to the one Harry had seen in the memory of Bellatrix at the Wizengamot, with several gauzy layers of lace covering her face and thicker, more opaque fabric falling down her back.

" _Please_ tell me I don't have to--" Hermione said, stopping short when Andromeda came in the door.

"No, you don't," Andromeda said, "It's fairly conservative even for funerary dress and I don't wear it  
elsewhere - well, except the Wizengamot - but if a Black woman showed up to an Auror funeral _unveiled_ people would say we were celebrating, even if the deceased wasn't our vassal. You should wear a hat or something over your hair, though, that's normal for women at our churches."

This delayed them for fifteen minutes while Andromeda went home and found a lacy dark gray scarf, then helped Hermione fasten it loosely over her hair. 

"That really matters?" Harry said dubiously, watching. Hermione looked up at him and made a face.

"It's church doctrine," Andy said, shrugging. "I hear the muggle Catholic church changed it in the seventies, and of course you never know with Protestants... Everyone ready now?"

Sirius, Andromeda and Ted each took one of them, and they Apparated to the churchyard before filing through the cemetery and up the crowded steps of the cathedral. The yard was packed with wizards and witches, some gathered in clumps whispering, some weeping, some chatting quite happily and calling across the crowd to friends as though this were a normal, celebratory occasion. 

Two Aurors stood at the door to the church itself wearing their scarlet work robes. Glancing around, Harry saw that Andromeda had been correct, and the vast majority of women inside the church were wearing either hats, or scarves, shawls and veils; but the female Aurors standing guard were dressed identically to the male ones and had neither.

At the front of the church was an open coffin, with - Harry swallowed - the body swathed in Auror scarlet cloth. Surrounding it were a clump of people, none of whom seemed to be the priest. As he filed after Sirius into place in the church pews, Harry studied them. A tall man who might have otherwise been handsome sat on the edge of the raised stage, head in his hands, looking numb, while next to the coffin stood a woman in a heavy black veil that went all the way to her knees. Two young girls sat by the coffin on the floor and a slightly older one perched on the edge of the table, reading from a book. An elderly man and two women, both veiled, sat in chairs next to the coffin.

"Those are the closest relatives," Sirius said quietly, seeing Harry's gaze. "They've been sitting vigil for at least overnight, probably a few days. I'm not sure who Vance's close relatives are, she wouldn't be married as an Auror and Aunt Dru was the one who met the family over the financial arrangements..."

"Not legally, but she was common law married, it's getting to be typical to get around it that way," Andromeda said quietly. "That's her husband - long term lover - sitting on the stage, and her sister and her sister's children. Her mother's living, she's in the closer chair, and her uncle and great-aunt. Technically the husband isn't even ours, he's under Carrow overlordship, but Cissy wrote and said we'd pay him a pension even if the marriage isn't legally recognized."

"I can never understand how you tell women apart in those things," Ted said.

"You look at the shoes and the bags," Andromeda said. Harry was close enough to see her roll her eyes under her own veil.

They watched people file in for what seemed like a long time to Harry. More uniformed Aurors formed a loose ring around the edge of the church, and dotted the crowd. Harry spotted Tonks by her clashing pink hair, looking uncharacteristically solemn, as part of a pair guarding the left entrance. About half of the remaining crowd seemed to be wearing black, while others wore a range of colors, mostly solemn but occasionally bright. He saw more people outside through the open doors and windows, and wondered how many would attend the funeral in total. There were radio broadcasters at the back of the church setting up equipment, so it would be broadcast as well... 

He wondered suddenly if Bellatrix Lestrange might show up again. Sirius had discussed the Death Eater terror attacks during the war in class last year, and it struck him that if she wanted to make an explosive announcement of Voldemort's return, a packed funeral for an Auror would do it. There was no way even this heavy an Auror presence would readily detect her, particularly with all of the veiled women... 

But no, he remembered from his dream that Bellatrix had murdered Vance in order to redirect attention away from the border while Voldemort crossed it. That had made sense before, but now he looked at the weeping and exhausted family, at the body at the front of the church, and thought that a woman had been murdered, a family left grieving her, all for what? Expediency?

Then a man in elaborate robes was coming to a podium at the church and Harry prepared himself for the service. Sirius's hand came to his shoulder and squeezed, almost too hard. Harry remembered that he'd said Emmeline had been not just a Black dependent but a friend of his, someone he'd known from the last war. He put his hand over Sirius's and squeezed back.

Sirius was exhausted by standing and sitting during mass, but they couldn't go home immediately; this was the public appearance the family had discussed him needing to make, and he had to stay in the churchyard and allow people to see him out of bed and alive. Harry and Andromeda helped him outside and to a bench, where he could prop himself up on the back and sit with them on either side, the rest of the family scattered around nearby.

Harry didn't know much about muggle funerals, but it was very obvious that the etiquette was different in the magical world anyway. It seemed to go both directions; there were people trailing the coffin to the grave site wailing and screaming in a way that reminded Harry of the banshee recordings Lupin had played third year, but on the other hand various groups had broken off from the service and appeared to be spreading out picnic materials in the grass around the headstones, laughing and gossiping loudly all the while.

"Funerals are a social occasion in the magical world," Ted said, spotting Harry eyeing one of the closer parties dubiously and speaking to him and Hermione. "A big, expensive one like this, especially. They don't really have the public stuff we're used to - even the theater closed in the seventies after the third Death Eater attack and never reopened - so you either go to the muggle world for that, or get your partying and business in where you can."

"Which is why - here we go," Sirius said under his breath, sounding less than pleased. Harry looked up and saw a small, dark-haired witch bearing down on them with an expression of ferocious determination. 

Sirius plastered a look of polite benevolence on and said, "Good afternoon, Mrs. Pepper."

"Good afternoon, Lord Black." She bowed deeply before him, then remained on her feet - not that there was anywhere left to sit nearby except the grass, or perhaps a nearby headstone. "I apologize for accosting you like this, but I was wondering where I might direct an inquiry about reclaiming my late husband's property now that the war is over and we're back in Britain..."

They spent an hour in the graveyard and Sirius was continuously mobbed. Each time he managed to give someone an answer for the problem they needed his help with, or the dispute they wanted settled, or the favor they wanted to ask him, someone else would approach. It went from at least mildly interesting to boring to extremely frustrating. Finally, Andromeda dryly told them to sacrifice her and accosted the next party approaching six feet away to ask them about their needs; meanwhile Harry and Hermione took Sirius by the elbows, helped him to his feet, and dashed, half-carrying him, to the nearest gate out of the cemetery.

Everyone was subdued the rest of the day. Hermione shut herself up in her room with several books about the history of property ownership in magical Europe. Meanwhile Sirius and, once she returned, Andromeda, settled in the living room with a bottle of firewhisky and proceeded to pass it back and forth, telling maudlin and increasingly garbled stories about the first war. Harry left after the one involving someone's hand being deliberately placed in the Ministry lost and found bin.

Tonks came home hours later, still in her scarlet duty robes and looking wrung out. She was trailed by Evelyn Shacklebolt wearing robes of very dark green that swept the floor and a black veil that reached her hips, with the front portion tossed back so that her face was bare. 

"Evelyn!" Harry said, coming down the stairs to see who had come in.

She looked surprised for a moment, then grinned. "Harry!" she said. "Do I look horribly proper to you?" She pushed her veil back behind her shoulders. "Tonks won't shut up laughing at me."

"Harry's still figuring out how to tell, so you're safe," Tonks said, reviving somewhat, and bumped her hip against Evelyn, grinning at her and taking her hand.

"So," he said, coming down the last few steps, "This might be rude, but... Does your family know about you two?" He had been wondering about this since finding out they were together last Easter, but the fact that they had come home from the funeral together had reminded him.

Evelyn's face went still. For a second Harry thought he'd said something horribly wrong, but then Tonks laughed and said, "Told you _someone_ would say something, Evie."

"I just expected it to be there," Evelyn said, smiling again and slinging her arm around Tonks. "To answer your question, it's not like me dressing like a lesbian most of the time - in Wizarding clothes, mind - is _subtle_ but most of my relations are still kind of pretending not to know."

"It's not just that I'm a girl, I'm also a dirty halfblood," Tonks said cheerfully, saluting Harry. "And that makes it worse."

"The problem's that everyone _knows_ you're a halfblood," Evelyn said. "If your parents hadn't made most of the tabloids they'd be fine with faking it. Anyway, now you're in the running for the next Lord Black so I expect they'll be pleased instead, which might be worse."

"I am not," Tonks said. "Mum let them reinstate _her_ , went back to using Black as a last name and everything so people would know, but the contract only said her children would have the _option_ of belonging to the house. They can't make me take it."

"Settled on a Quidditch team yet, Harry?" Evelyn said loudly.

Tonks had a compelling argument for yet another team once she heard he still didn't have one. Harry took them into the kitchen and made them dinner while Tonks attempted to claim his allegiances and Evelyn watched her with fond indulgence. He didn't often cook for people by himself now that he was away from the Dursleys, but Tonks had been standing guard at a funeral all day, and she looked much better once she had eaten.

"And he has practical skills, too," Evelyn said drily. "Cho Chang's right not to be able to believe her luck - oh, uh, hi, Andromeda."

"Thanks for bringing her home before she tripped into the grave, Evie," Andromeda said, coming in. "Is that food? Morgana, I could get used to having you and Sirius around, Harry, you wouldn't want to move in with us, would you? You can have Dora's room--"

"Mum!" Tonks said indignantly around a mouth of potatoes.

"I thought you wanted to move out again now that you're out of the training barracks," Andromeda said.

"I thought you didn't want me to!"

"Too late, you've been replaced," Andromeda said. "Evie, darling, you're always welcome, of course."

Harry elected to make his escape at this point.

Possibly spurred by the murder, Andromeda announced a few days later that she thought it was time to tackle getting information out of Lucretia. "And I think Sirius had better do it because she's hung up on you," she said matter-of-factly, dropping onto the couch next to Sirius and planting her chin over his shoulder. "Your father was about her favorite person in the universe--"

"And here I thought her being a _Death Eater_ meant she'd lost her mind--" Sirius muttered.

Andromeda snorted in what seemed to be agreement. "Yes, well, you're his one remaining child, so you've got an advantage. And I'd have Harry around as well, he's the most obvious connection to the issue. But you need to hash out what to ask her, don't tell me you'll improvise. You're the embodiment of Gryffindor chivalric virtues, you hurl yourself into the breach _quite_ nicely but I'd like an actual plan this time."

"Alright, alright. Well, obviously we don't want to ask anything specific enough to give away what we know, but his identity isn't really a secret. I thought we'd ask about Tom Riddle at school, and if she's willing to talk about him, move on to an open ended question about his experiments. Then we stop and analyze how much she gave and how much is testable. Do I have your approval, O Wise Slytherin?"

"For now," Andromeda said haughtily, then ruined the effect by turning her face into his hair. "Brat." She paused. "When did you last wash your hair? I swear this is a mat."

"You're worse than Cissy," Sirius said, groaning and trying to rise, but Andromeda grabbed his hand. 

"No," she said, firmly. "Stay here. I am getting a comb."

Harry still really wasn't sure how what to think of how the Black cousins never stopped touching each other.

Accordingly the next day Harry and Hermione went over to Grimmauld Place accompanied by Sirius. Sirius's excuse was discussing when and where he was going to start holding court for the Black vassals with Narcissa and Andromeda; this was something he really did need to do now that he was able to stay out of bed for long enough.

Meanwhile, Harry and Hermione went down to the kitchen to say hello to Dobby, Winky, and - reluctantly - Kreacher. 

Dobby, who had returned to Grimmauld Place when other humans took up residence there but was still refusing to acknowledge Narcissa's existence, was thrilled to see them. Winky was friendly enough these days but really preferred Narcissa to the rest of them, something she and Dobby constantly bickered about. Narcissa was in Winky's view a proper witch. 

Kreacher, on the other hand, appeared to like no one, although he approved marginally more of Draco and Lucretia than anybody else. He disliked Narcissa passionately, which had confused everyone until she mentioned that he had been taking orders from a life-sized portrait of Sirius's mother until she took up residence. ("She put it up in the entry with a Permanent Sticking Charm," Narcissa had said, rolling her eyes. "I removed it. With Fiendfyre.")

They admired Dobby's collection of socks and discussed the efforts to finish renovating Grimmauld Place until Sirius came to get Harry; it was time to talk to Lucretia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Find this](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/629164889350504448/the-glass-fortress-chpt-2-a-black-affair) and me on tumblr!
> 
> The funerary dress here is loosely based off of Dumbledore's funeral in DH, in which the body is wrapped in colored cloth, Madam Pince wears a knee length black veil, and various other people are mentioned as wearing their usual bright colors. In general medieval funerary clothing varied a lot more than modern Western plain black, too. Paying your feudal lord a tithe when somebody dies was another real historical thing.
> 
> As for the kiss, I footnoted that in the epilogue of year four, but in general the division between sexual and platonic behavior was pretty different historically in different cultures. Another example: for a long time in western cultures, you might affectionately call your wife "Sister."


	4. Family Inheritance

Grimmauld Place had been the residence of the Head of the Black family and those branches with young children since the most recent building was put up in the early 1800s. While set in a narrow lot, the house was deep and extremely tall, and space within it did not always align itself as expected. Harry and Sirius climbed several flights of steps and then went across the landing, through a narrow doorway and passage, and around a bend.

They emerged from the gloomy corridor into a room Harry hadn't seen before. It was a small, almost circular sitting room with arch-shaped windows set along the outer wall and filled with colored glass that obscured the city streets below. The rest of the room was hung with tapestries of hunting and nature scenes. There were a number of squashy arm chairs and sofas in the room, as well as thick carpets and padded benches.

Lucretia was seated near the fire place and appeared to be in the midst of repairing yet another tapestry, although as they entered she was staring into the hearth in distraction. Andromeda had left, but Narcissa and Druella had had time to join Lucretia. Narcissa was embroidering the cuffs of a set of deep sapphire robes, something she was capable of doing while barely looking at them. Druella, seated on the opposite side near the windows, had a book open her lap.

"Hello, Sirius," Druella said, looking up. "Harry. Did you forget to ask Cissy something?"

"Not exactly. Mind if we sit?" Sirius asked, glancing around. Harry had the impression he was uncomfortable, but couldn't think why; granted, one of the tapestries contained a disturbing scene involving a unicorn being speared, and there were alarming faces carved into the corners of the mantle, but in general this was one of the least disturbing rooms he had yet seen in Grimmauld Place.

"Go ahead. I'm afraid Lucretia may need some time to recover," Druella said, glancing a little nastily across the room.

"Of course it's fine, Druella," Lucretia said, casting an attempt at a quelling look at her. Druella only smiled and looked back down at her book.

"I don't want to intrude," Sirius said, still standing.

"For heaven's sake, Sirius, if we were seriously trying to keep you out we'd have put up a curtain or something," Narcissa said, needle flashing in and out of the cuff. 

"Fair enough," Sirius said, and sat down on a maroon sofa. Harry rapidly joined him. "Lucretia, I had a few questions for you, but you don't have to answer them."

Lucretia looked up. Her face was poised, but something made Harry think she wanted to frown. "Of course, Sirius."

Sirius hesitated again, then said, "I haven't wanted to bring up your political allegiances, but... You must understand that should Voldemort return, my godson will inevitably be a target."

"I was aware of the realities of the situation when I chose to owl Narcissa, yes," Lucretia said calmly. "He is your ward and therefore a child of the house."

"Then I wondered whether you might know something helpful to us."

"If it's about the war, I doubt it. I'll tell you anything you want to know, but I primarily worked on logistics for Bella's combat team, and most of it isn't relevant anymore. There might be a couple of safe houses or bank accounts..." Lucretia shrugged.

"If you could write down the safe house locations later I'd appreciate it, but we were looking for something a little different. You knew Tom Riddle in school, didn't you?"

Lucretia's stare at Sirius was long this time. Her mouth twisted, the firelight casting deeper shadows into her face. "Yes," she said, slowly. "Yes, I did. Not well... I'm not sure anyone has ever known him well. What do you want to know?"

"I understand he'd started experimenting with magic well before he left school," Sirius said. "And he'd already developed some of his... interests."

"If you mean his obsession with the Founders of Hogwarts, and with bloodlines, yes." Lucretia shrugged. "He was an orphan when he came to school, his mother had died in childbirth and his father was not involved with her. He was raised by a muggle institution and had no idea of magic, but no more idea of the identity of his kin, so it seemed a natural enough obsession. 

"Reinhard and Abraxas were his first friends, and probably his only real ones unless you count Bella. They indulged him, brought genealogy books from their family libraries, that sort of thing. They probably wanted to be able to tell their families he must be pureblood, especially Reinhard. You remember how conservative the Lestranges were before Rodolphus inherited, Cissy, Druella." Narcissa snorted at that. 

" _Before?_ " Harry interrupted, then flushed as all eyes turned towards him.

"Yes," Lucretia said at length. "The Death Eaters were ultimately a very modern movement. Anyone with four magical grandparents counted as a pureblood on par with people like us, and your allegiance was to the Dark Lord and not your kin, you know. Our family thought it was a bit hasty; the elder Lestranges would have been disgusted. You know, Madeleine Lestrange actually objected to Bellatrix on the grounds that it had been something like eight generations since the Lestrange heir married a woman from another House?"

"I have to say, I've heard a lot of complaints about our family," Sirius said, "But 'not inbred enough' is a new one for me."

"Madeleine's real objections were political," Druella said. "She couched it in extreme traditionalism because it was safer at the time."

"Her husband was violent, and by the time her son inherited he'd also chained his soul to the Dark Lord," Lucretia allowed. Narcissa was staring down at the robes in her lip, knuckles white with tension. "But you asked about the - about Tom Riddle, rather. I'm afraid most of it won't be very relevant... You know he claimed to be the heir of Slytherin, I believe. He was charismatic, particularly once it became apparent he was powerful and connected by blood to the Gaunts and he was less of a pariah in Slytherin; well spoken, intelligent, pretty--"

"Pretty?" Narcissa said, sounding strangled.

Lucretia shrugged. "I am aware of how he ended up, yes, but he was, and that is most certainly the word, not handsome. A bit like Draco in build, but with dark hair and eyes, and a softer face. To be entirely forthright I think that may be _why_ he destroyed his looks, he was competent enough to have avoided it if he was trying."

"You think he..?" Druella asked, then stopped without finishing the question.

Lucretia seemed to understand; she shook her head thoughtfully. "He hardly needed interest from a teacher; you know what pureblood girls of that age are like, especially with an intelligent, pretty no-name boy with no money. This is baseless speculation and profoundly unlikely to be helpful, I apologize. Oh! I thought of something," she added, thoughtfully. "You know what Horcruxes are, don't you?"

Harry looked up, startled, and met Narcissa's wide blue eyes.

"Er," Sirius said. "Yes, it's a method of splitting off the soul..."

"Yes. Traditionally a pursuit of the quite mad, and you'd normally only make one, but Tom had some ridiculous idea that more would be more stable and therefore safer, and a magically significant number might amplify one's capacity to channel power. Reinhard tried very hard to convince him that it was a bad idea but he never did seem to agree..."

"I'm sorry, they just _discussed_ this? Openly?" Druella said, helpfully, as Harry didn't have to.

"Well, not as a _plan_ ," Lucretia said. "Obviously everything was couched in hypotheticals, you know, 'If Grindelwald had done this,' and 'Should a user of Horcruxes discover a need to utilize a solution of unicorn tears, and what if there were more than one,' that sort of thing. But you can generally tell when someone means it a little _too_ much, and Tom invariably did. 

"I assume you're worried about his obsession with immortality? That was well known, and I'd assume that's what you're up against. He did have some interest in the typical body augmentation spellwork, protection against damage from the elements and such, but whatever the Evans girl did clearly got around that. Most of them won't work on a resurrected body, although given he does have Bella with him one never knows."

She frowned. "I do hope that's enough to actually help. I'm afraid I don't have quite a clear idea of what he - no, that's untrue, I have some guesses. He was interested in the magical resonance between the pieces of soul and the identity of the object used to house them, for example if you used a mirror, could your soul use the reflection to communicate or possess, or view long distances? If you used an animal, could you use it as an extension of your consciousness, be in two places at once? And the Horcrux formation ritual apparently works better with emotional resonance between the creator and the object, we found that out when we were researching it as a group; so he would certainly have chosen meaningful ones."

"So - d'you know of anything like that, then?" Harry asked.

"Mm. He had this ring - he found out about his family connection to the Gaunts, I mentioned that, didn't it? He said it was a family heirloom. Got it about when the uncle was arrested for murdering the local muggles for defiling his sister, so I suppose he probably stole it from the house if he didn't do the murdering himself," Lucretia said apathetically. 

"Later he was apparently very interested in Founders' artifacts. He actually worked for Borgin and Burke's for a time, it drove Reinhard quite mad, he kept trying to convince him to take a _respectable_ job. Anyway he vanished right around the death of Hepzibah Smith, who was well known to have been the rightful owner of a cup belonging to Helga Hufflepuff and a locket of Slytherin's, neither of which was ever seen again. So that does seem quite open and shut, doesn't it? Not that I've the faintest idea of where he would have put them."

" _Borgin and Burke's?_ " Narcissa said, appalled. "That - mangy, flea-bitten--"

"Mm. No name, no money, as I said." Lucretia's shrug was artful in its disinterest. "And he never did much like to socialize. If he'd taken a job at the Ministry and worked his way up he'd probably have ruled the country in fifteen or twenty years, but he wasn't that interested. He'd have had to spend all day talking to people."

That Sunday, Harry had a much more pressing and immediate concern than Voldemort or Bellatrix Lestrange: Cho's family was going to be in London for a week, visiting with her mother's relatives in the city, and she had written to Harry to arrange for him and Sirius to come to dinner with them. They had planned to meet in a park near Cho's cousins' house, but as it continued to ran all day they changed arrangements to a nearby restaurant.

It wasn't the first time Harry had seen Cho that summer. However, their previous visit had been a few days after the holidays ended, had occurred in Sirius's kitchen, and had consisted largely of comparing notes about Crouch's actions over the past year. Afterward Cho had been swept up in family visits for several weeks.

Entering the restaurant, Harry got about five seconds to look around for them before Cho got up and nearly tackled him. 

"Harry!" she said, arms tight around him. "It's so good to see you!"

"Hi, Cho," he said, and kissed her. 

It was different from how he remembered it; his memories blurred a lot of the detail into an impression of fluttering fingers and smooth hair and her lips. In person, he could taste her lip balm and mint tooth paste and garlic in her mouth, and feel her purse strap digging into his shoulder. 

He'd missed her.

Cho pulled back after a minute, giggling, but she didn't look like he'd ruined anything kissing her in front of - he flushed - her parents. "Come on," she said, grabbing his hand and leading him over to the table, where her parents were exchanging amused looks. She was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt in muggle London, and her hair was in a ponytail instead of carefully styled and left loose. She looked good that way, he thought, mouth dry, and then he had to concentrate on her family. 

Cho's parents were introduced as Mrs. Lin ("Except in the Wizengamot, then it's Mrs. Chang") and Mr. Chang; then Harry met her cousin Lei and two little sisters. Mrs. Lin, the ex-Auror, was a witch dressed in a button down blouse and a skirt that would have gone to the knees if she had still had any, with shoulder length hair. Her wheelchair was folded up against the wall next to her chair. Mr. Chang was also dressed reasonably in slacks and a shirt, but there was some indefinable air to him that told Harry he wasn't used to muggle dress.

Cho had mentioned several times in letters that Lei had become insufferable while Cho was away at school, and kept nagging her about her clothing, and her behavior, and whether anyone would want to marry her the way she acted. Just now she was scrutinizing Harry, lips pursed. Where Cho was wearing jeans and a sweat shirt, Lei had on a skirt, stockings and a faintly shiny blouse; she obviously followed muggle as well as magical fashion.

"--And these are my little sisters," Cho said. "Xiulan - she's going to be in fourth year, she's in Ravenclaw too--"

"Hi," Xiulan said; Harry thought he remembered seeing her with Cho's group occasionally, but not often.

"And Yuyan, she's still a few years from starting."

"Did you really ride a sphinx out of the maze at the Third Task?" said Yuyan, leaning forward eagerly. Harry thought she was perhaps eight or nine. She had sparkly rainbow barrettes holding back her long hair, and was kicking the wall behind the table absent mindedly with her heels. "Was it scary? Did she bite you?"

"Er, no," Harry said. "She rode on the back of my broom to get out of the maze, since it was on fire. And she thanked me. She said she'd been hired to work for the Tournament."

"I wondered about that story," Mrs. Lin said. "Cho has been very nonspecific about the papers' claims, and Xiulan says she couldn't see a thing."

"I was stuck behind Castor and Pollux Trelawney and they're both basically trolls," Xiulan said. "I couldn't get them to move. And then Luna started going on about Nargles."

"Nargles?" Harry said.

"Luna's a girl in my class who believes in all of these things that don't exist and won't shut up about them," Xiulan said.

"Xenophilius Lovegood's daughter," Mrs. Lin said quietly to Sirius, who had been introducing himself to the adults. "The man - well, the Quibbler had its uses in the seventies, but the man hasn't been right in the head since his wife died a few years back. His daughter's very bright, but he's been going on about his conspiracy theories to her since she could speak, and..."

"And she's a total lunatic," Xiulan said with the air of patient explanation.

"You don't have to be her best friend, but you don't need to go on about her behind her back."

"You were just doing it to Mr. Black," Xiulan pointed out.

"Don't talk back," Cho said, shooing Xiulan back to her chair and making a face at Harry, who tried to look sympathetic back.

At this point they were interrupted by the server asking for drink orders, and there were a few brief moments of total chaos. Yuyan demanded Cho explain the menu to her in depth, while Xiulan and their mother argued quietly about her classmate Luna. Sirius was talking to Mr. Chang about something involving real estate and rents that Harry could only grasp a few words of. 

"Look at this part of the menu, c'mon," Cho said, brushing her long hair out of her face and inadvertently whipping it across Harry's mouth without noticing. "Look, you like chicken and you like noodles, right?"

It was messy and chaotic and reminded Harry distinctively of the Burrow, although the setting and the people were different. He felt at home at once and immensely relieved; he had been half-expecting some repetition of the tea Narcissa had taken him and Draco to where he'd met Cho's aunt, which had not been terrible but had definitely been exhausting.

Cho finally got Yuyan settled with her choice of food, which gave Harry a chance to look through the menu and pick something himself. He had a little more practice with it, having been out a few more times this summer and last with Sirius, but it was still an unfamiliar task. He and Cho tried to talk about their upcoming classes. Cho had received her O.W.L. results a couple of weeks ago. For a moment she looked like she might cry when he asked, and he was nervous, but it turned out to be relief she'd passed everything she needed.

"--Not that I know what I want to do," Cho said, sighing, "But it would be awful to figure it out just after I failed something important."

"Are you still thinking of applying to the Aurors?" Harry asked, and regretted it when Mrs. Lin glanced up immediately from several places down.

"Cho, you didn't tell me you were thinking of that."

Harry mouthed 'Sorry' at Cho, who grimaced and shrugged. "It was just a thought, Mum, I haven't really decided," she said. "What about you, Harry?"

"No idea," he said promptly. "Tonks is really cool, though - er, do you know her?" he asked Mrs. Lin.

"Nymphadora Tonks?" Mrs. Lin's lips twitched upward. "Everyone knows her, the amount of collateral damage she leaves in her wake... Very good student, though, as long as you don't need stealth - well, a good Auror now. One of the last ones Alastor Moody trained before retiring. Your cousin, isn't she?" she said to Sirius.

"Yes, her mother took up the Wizengamot seat after my - injury in June, so we've seen a lot of them over the summer," Sirius said. "Were you well acquainted with Alastor, then? I was introduced by Dumbledore just after I got out of school..."

Harry made it through the food and forty minutes of conversation before he and Cho were done eating, at which point Cho promptly grabbed his hand, announced, "We're going for a walk - alright Harry? Great! We'll be _right outside_ ," and got up and practically propelled him out the door.

"That bad?" Harry asked, slinging an arm around her waist.

Cho cuddled against him in a way that made his breath come faster even if she was still about half a foot taller than him. "I love them," she said, "Very much, every one of them, and after a few days of _all of them at once_ I want to start screaming and never stop. 

"Lei and Tao are the oldest in Mum's side of the family - well, Lei isn't technically part of it but she counts since we raised her - but they're both adults. And because they're both adults, they can go off and hang out in London with their friends when we all stay together, and only come back for dinner and stuff when they want to, even if there is a "security situation." _I'm_ stuck at home being head babysitter while the adults play cards and talk about twenty year old politics. And Mum couldn't get off work to go to China like usual what with - what happened to Emmeline Vance, so they decided to draw this visit out for _weeks_ instead." Cho took a deep breath. "It'll be great experience for when I'm married, I guess."

"I guess," Harry said, trying not to feel too jealous of her description of the visits. "Would they let you come hang out at our house while you're here? We don't really have a lot of plans, Sirius still can't stay out for more than a couple of hours at a time. Although if you don't have a Floo at your cousins'..." He couldn't remember whether the cousins Cho was staying with were her mother's Wizarding or muggle relations. Floo had been the secure means by which Ron had visited for Harry's birthday.

" _I will find out_ ," Cho said, as grimly as though they were discussing battle plans. Then they caught each other's eyes and started laughing helplessly.

"They're not bad, not really," Cho said, giggling. "It's just, twenty people in two small suburban houses, and none of the kids allowed further than the gardens--"

"That does sound kind of awful," Harry said, and took advantage of the fact that they were outside and had some privacy to kiss her again. At some point over the last few weeks when he hadn't been able to see her, he had somehow grasped the point of kissing. It had now become much more interesting, and if they had been say, in his bedroom or somewhere similarly secure he could have kept it up for a long time. But--

"We probably should keep our eye on the crowd," he said, reluctantly pulling away. "You know, Bellatrix Lestrange..."

Cho's eyes went wide. "I just mentioned security and I still forgot," she admitted. "Mum might be furious - oh well, she didn't get Dad or Leilei to go charging after us so she probably figures it's safe enough."

"Sirius taught us some things just in case something happened," Harry said. "Do you know how to cast a Disillusionment Charm?"

Cho had heard of them but never seen one cast, so Harry explained the wand movement and incantation, although he couldn't demonstrate it for her in public. They wandered around the park they'd meant to meet in. The fine, misting rain had driven off most of the people, so they had privacy with which to talk about their summers.

"--So last Sunday another howler came for Druella in the middle of dinner, it fell into the middle of the potatoes," Harry said. "And she opened it with her wand and it nearly set them on fire, and this man's voice comes out and he's going on for ages. You know, 'DRUELLA ROSIER, AFTER ALL WE'VE SACRIFICED FOR YOU AS A FAMILY, FOR YOU TO GO TO LIVE WITH SCUM AND-' the sort of thing people say about us, and, 'IT JUST GOES TO SHOW THAT WE SHOULD HAVE DEALT WITH YOU WHEN YOU WERE FOURTEEN AND PREGNANT BY GOD KNOWS WHO, THE BLACKS ARE WHAT YOU DESERVE AND WE HOPE YOUR OWN DAUGHTER WASHES YOUR SHAME CLEAN WITH YOUR BLOOD--'"

"Oh my _god_ ," Cho said, with a snort of horrified laughter.

"Yeah, they've all been like that. Lucretia's looking at it like she might faint, and Narcissa's the color of the wall behind her, and Druella just casts _Silencio_ , picks the dish up up and goes, "Really, he's only a third cousin, and those potatoes absolutely did not need to be cooked twice." Then she crumpled it in her water glass and told Winky to take it out back and drown it until it shut up."

"I suppose there was no point in worrying what you'd think of _my_ family," Cho said.

"Probably not," Harry said. "Your mum seems cool, though."

Cho blushed and smiled.

They spent a companionable hour or so wandering around the park in circles and talking. Perhaps it was the fact that Cho was no longer worried about her O.W.L.s, or perhaps it was only the things that they had shared in letters, when they weren't face to face, but talking to her was much easier than it had been. 

Eventually Sirius came out and told them they were about ready to go, and gave their telephone number to Mrs. Lin so that they could call if Cho was free and wanted to come over. Then Sirius and Harry walked to the Apparition point home.

Upon entering the house, Sirius went immediately down the stairs to bed. Harry waited at the top, worried he would fall, until he heard the loud clunking noise of Sirius hauling himself down steps even out into quieter footsteps accompanied by the tapping of his stick. Then he started back into the kitchen, thinking vaguely of making some hot cocoa after spending the last hour in the rain.

The kitchen light was off, so he nearly walked inside before Narcissa's quiet, intense voice halted him.

"...say that I didn't know, but of course if I had I wouldn't have cared," she was saying. "I wanted Sirius to help me, and it frightened me that he - well. He's told me, since, that Bella told him to go, before he was forced to take the mark. But without knowing that I thought he had suddenly abandoned his family, and I didn't know why. One of the more coherent complaints made about muggles is that they have no sense of family or responsibility, they break their word and ignore ties freely, and I thought that Sirius wanted to emulate them, so..."

"So you're saying you were afraid Sirius would refuse to help you leave your husband because he still lived like a muggle," Hermione said from further in the kitchen, voice clear and flat.

Harry jumped. He started to take a step back, wanting to go before Hermione caught him eavesdropping, but the floorboard began to creak and he froze instead, swearing mentally. Meanwhile, they were still talking:

"Yes, that essentially summarizes it," Narcissa said. "We have - or rather I had at the time - no way of judging someone but by their adherence to convention, the sense of honor they abide by. Taking in his godson and providing for his education, and in fact having broken out of prison in order to protect him, seemed to be honorable actions; eschewing the family political and financial responsibilities and disappearing into a common London townhouse did not, so I was already frightened of what I'd found by the time he opened the door, and..."

"You could have just asked, and you would have been free six months sooner," Hermione said. He knew it was Hermione from her voice and the way she spoke, but her tone was cold and ruthless, like that of a stranger.

"I know that now," Narcissa said. "I didn't then. I am trying to say - I was lashing out at him for testing me, for refusing his responsibilities, and I hoped that I could embarrass him into fulfilling them, which I know was the wrong strategy now."

"It does make more sense of what you said after that part," Hermione said. "I just - I'm sorry, but I have this sense that you primarily regret it because you want something from me - for me to like you, I mean - and _that_ feels rather frighteningly arbitrary to me."

Narcissa laughed, to Harry's surprise. "Fair enough," she said. "We were not taught, as children, to consider others' pain, others' feelings, except insofar as we needed to calculate their reactions. Some of us learned it anyway, inherently, but some of us did not. If I felt little at upsetting you, I have felt equally little about hurting those of my own class; you are not... uniquely inhuman to me. I do not know if that is reassuring or the opposite."

"I suppose that depends on how you behave now, doesn't it?" Hermione said, voice icy.

Harry decided he had heard far more than he should have already. He inched, carefully, back up the hall as Narcissa said, "Naturally;" then he turned at the stairs and clumped noisily up.

That Tuesday, Harry received an extremely welcome surprise. At the time he was making dinner. Meanwhile Hermione, who had brewed Polyjuice Potion perfectly at the age of thirteen but somehow could not make toast without burning it black, sat curled up in a kitchen chair and read out absurd snatches of _The Adventures of Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle,_ which she had borrowed from Ron by owl post. Crookshanks prowled around the counter tops, staying deftly away from Harry's cooking as only a kneazle would know to do.

"--And then he says, "But halt, villain, with my _fellytone_ I can call for help without a fire--" Hi Sirius!"

"Hello," Sirius called from the hall, coming into the kitchen to sit down and putting his stick against the table. "What on earth are you reading, Hermione?"

"I borrowed it from Ron for cultural research," Hermione said primly, and giggled. "You know, the thing I don't understand is that there's no way the artist is this uneducated about muggles because they'd have to have read superhero comics to even make most of these jokes."

"Literature about muggles doesn't sell in the magical world," Sirius said wryly. "Jokes do. Anything I can do to help sitting down, Harry?"

"Er, if you want," Harry said, looking around. "Can you put the salad stuff together?" he asked, moving the bags to the table for Sirius along with the bowl, and went back to the stove. "It'll be a few minutes before it's done, sorry."

"It's fine, it's fine," Sirius said. He had tried very hard to convince Harry he didn't have to cook for him, and they could get takeout any time. Harry had eventually persuaded Sirius in turn that he _liked_ cooking, particularly since with Sirius ill and the security risks they had to either prevail on Andromeda to pick up their food or order exclusively from the few restaurants that delivered to their house. They could have sent the house elves to bring carryout from magical restaurants or food from Grimmauld Place, but Hermione was so obviously uncomfortable with it that Harry didn't like the option.

"Anyway," Sirius went on, shaking greens out from the bag, "I have some good news - at least, I hope you two will think it's good. I heard from Remus."

"How's Mongolia?" Hermione asked eagerly. "Has he found a publisher for his book on wyverns?"

"As a matter of fact, he has, he's just got to get the manuscript in order," Sirius said. "And he can do that in Britain. He's coming back."

"He is?" Harry said eagerly. "Is he coming here?"

"You've anticipated me," Sirius said, an oddly shy look on his face. "I was going to ask if you two would mind him moving in. He'd be sharing with me, no need to worry about giving up your rooms or having him keeping you up moving around in the attic. And since I can afford to commission Wolfsbane every month, we won't need to make a space to lock him up, either, he'll just need privacy to avoid infecting anyone by accidental contact."

"That's fantastic," Harry said, then glanced at Hermione. "Er, assuming you agree--"

"I'm just a guest," Hermione said, blushing. 

"You live here as much as Harry does, for as long as you want to," Sirius said seriously, looking at her. "You have just as much a say."

"Of course I'd love to have Remus here," Hermione said, voice stronger.

"Are you two..." Harry hesitated, uncertain where the rules lay here. "Er, together again?"

"Tentatively," Sirius said, clearly relieved that Harry had broached the subject. "It's been years and years, I don't know if it will work out, but I hope so. We've been - talking about it - by letter for the last year, and he's willing to give me another try... Assuming Narcissa and Lucretia don't run him off," he added.

"Do they not like..." Hermione faltered. "You being gay?"

"I'm bisexual, actually, and it's not that. Not exactly. Narcissa is too, as it happens, although she'd never use such a muggle word for it. They might object to Remus on the basis of him being a werewolf, but no great amount, as the Blacks have always been absurdly scandalous. If I was keeping him on the side while I looked for a nice society wife to have my children and run my parties, they'd be fine with it." Sirius smiled crookedly.

"But you're not going to do that, so they're not happy," Harry finished.

"Yeah. Mind, I wouldn't do that _anyway_. I like children, and I like women, but my first arranged engagement was bad enough, and all the girls Narcissa wants to throw at me are only a few years older than you two. I keep telling her no, and there's nothing she can really do but keep asking, but it's driving me up the wall anyway..." Sirius shook his head. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to drag you two into it. I imagine she'll realize I mean it soon enough, or decide I'm still recovering from Azkaban and give it a rest for another year."

Remus arrived at the end of the week, suitcase a little more battered and stuffed extremely full of papers. He was tanned and happy in a way that Harry could not remember him ever being at Hogwarts. He and Sirius were surprisingly awkward around each other at first, but he was otherwise very similar to before, except that he urged Harry and Hermione to call him Remus. Now that he was no longer a Hogwarts professor he also felt quite free to regale them with stories of ridiculous things they had gotten up to at school with James, or of his travels, including several racier jokes that Harry would not remotely have understood at thirteen.

Tonks came over very often, apparently enthralled with Remus's travel stories, and Andromeda and Ted got on with him quite well. Druella and Remus were mutually wary initially but warmed up to each other over time, and Lucretia cut off any issues by ignoring him completely. The person who was really visibly unhappy was Narcissa.

"Did she really think she was going to get Sirius to marry some Hogwarts graduate with an impeccable pedigree?" Hermione asked Druella eventually. They had overheard Narcissa and Sirius arguing as they arrived at Grimmauld Place for the magic lessons Hermione had joined. They were now in the library, talking about their notes on the book they were slowly disenchanting; and muffled shouting had just intruded, again, from outside the room.

"No," Druella said, smiling wanly. "Cissy was quite aware that was unrealistic. She was hoping that when Sirius gave up and ordered her to quit suggesting girls, he would agree to marry her."

There was a very long silence.

"Narcissa is--" Harry started to say 'in love with' and rapidly back tracked, This did not seem an applicable sentiment for Narcissa in general, let alone appropriate for her and Sirius. "She has feelings for him?"

"What do feelings have to do with it?" Druella gave a tiny shrug. "She's necessary to the House, it's been decimated and we need her as a manager, but that makes it all the less likely she'll ever remarry. She wanted children - numerous children - to fuss over, and to show off to her friends, and she always expected to be the mistress of a household. If she can convince Sirius to marry her, she can have those things, without having to risk an unfamiliar family and an unknown man. 

"Oh, I don't think it was a good idea," she added, seeing their faces, "But it _is_ what Narcissa was thinking. Remus is rather an obstacle to that plan. Don't worry, I'll get Andromeda and possibly her daughter around and talk Cissy down after they're done shouting. Hermione, if you don't mind staying after, I think you might be helpful."

Hermione was home several hours later than Harry, and thoughtful for the rest of the day. She said nothing to Harry about what Druella had wanted her to help with until late that night, when she knocked on his door around midnight. Harry jumped then called, "Come in?"

Hermione pushed open the door, looking anxious and pale. "Good, I didn't wake you up," she said, glancing around.

"No, I couldn't sleep," Harry said, sitting up and moving the books off his bed, feeling rather as though he and Hermione had switched places. "C'mere, what's wrong?"

"Thanks," Hermione said, trailing around the mess on the floor to sit next to him. "I wanted to talk to you about something, actually."

"Oh." Harry had a moment of wondering what she was worried about him doing wrong now, before he told himself to stop being a prick. The war was showing every sign of restarting, and Hermione would be a target the same way he was; and it seemed increasingly clear that she had effectively run away from home this summer, the longer she went without any contact from her parents. She had many things to be upset about beyond the state of Harry's summer homework. And this very likely had something to do with the Black family meeting she had been included in earlier. "What is it?"

"It's about earlier, and how... You know I was talking to Sirius all last year about politics, right? About house elves at first, but then we got into how the law works in Magical England and how it's changed and the Wizengamot, and I started writing to Percy and everything..."

"I know." Fleetingly he wondered how Percy was taking his adored boss being tried for kidnapping and then murdered by an escaped Death Eater with the aid of the son he had smuggled out of Azkaban and kept imprisoned for years. "Did something come up with that?"

"No," Hermione said. "I mean, not exactly. I - I asked him not to mention it to you at first, and I think he wasn't even really serious then but now with Narcissa hassling him about getting married it came up, and--"

"To mention what, Hermione?" Harry interrupted, familiar with the way she could go on.

"Oh. Well," Hermione said. " _Obviously_ you're the most important to him but you've got your own family's position to inherit and he says he's absolutely not getting married, and Tonks says she doesn't want it, so - he asked if I might want him to adopt me, actually. When we were first talking about it it was just to give me a seat in the Wizengamot when I grew up, basically, because he saw I had political ideas and didn't really have any way of doing anything about it, but now I've basically run away from home..."

" _Oh_ ," Harry said, and slowly began to grin. "If Sirius adopted you we'd be god-siblings, wouldn't we?"

Hermione gave him a startled look and then burst into nervous giggles. "I - yes - you know, I was _petrified_ you'd think I was intruding--"

"Hermione, I've been jealous of Ron having six siblings since we _met_ ," Harry said. "--Since before we met, actually, I saw him with Fred and George and Ginny and Percy on the platform before we ever spoke. Why wouldn't I want you for a sister?"

"That - that helps, actually," Hermione said. "I've just - I've been having second thoughts - it's not that I don't really appreciate everything Sirius has done for me, I _do_ , but it's not just him anymore, and..."

"And being adopted by Sirius is different from being adopted by Narcissa and Lucretia and Druella?" Harry said. He had been feeling similarly odd much of the time.

"Yes, exactly." Hermione drew one knee to her chest. "It's not that they're being horrible. They're not. Actually, I think the _problem_ is that they're not; I could just think of it as spiting them if they were, but they're so happy about having someone to inherit the house - and a girl around - that I feel like Narcissa and Lucretia especially are making me an exception from all other muggleborns in order to be able to be happy about it."

Harry took a moment to sort through this in his head. "I don't think you're wrong, exactly," he said slowly. "But if they want to be around you then they've got to learn to behave, haven't they?"

"Ted said something a little like that when I talked to him," Hermione admitted. "You know he and Andromeda started dating when they were fifteen, and according to them - especially Andromeda - she was really awful at that age to everyone but him. But he said he saw how her family was worse to her, and she was just - caught in this web of horrible people because she'd been born there, and no one had ever tried to act decent to her and given her a chance to figure out how to be decent back... But she was also _fifteen_ and they're not." 

Hermione gave a little shake like a dog. "And it's not just that, it's that when we were first talking Sirius made it sound like it was just the political power and the seat, I didn't realize how much _work_ it would be if I really inherited - that sounds so selfish." She made an expressive face. "It's not that I'd mind work. It's just that it's going to take up all his time as soon as he's recovered, really, and there's so much he's not doing, and I can see that it would be my entire life if I said yes - I'd have to spend eighty hours every week handling business arrangements and rents and vassal disputes and I just wouldn't have any time for working on political change."

Harry made a mental note to ask about what she wanted to use the Black Wizengamot seat for later, when she was more awake and not anxiously rambling. "Well," he said, trying to organize his thoughts, "You don't _have_ to go along with what Narcissa and Lucretia want to take Sirius's offer, do you? It's not like he made it a condition--"

"No, of course not--"

"And he's got Andromeda sitting in the Wizengamot for him now, and Druella and Narcissa handling a lot of the other stuff, doesn't he? So couldn't he adopt you and have you handle the seat when you're an adult, or whatever you wanted to do, without you taking his job after him?" The thought of anyone being Sirius's heir was somewhat upsetting: Harry did not want to think of Sirius dying, even many, many years in the future.

"Maybe," Hermione said. "That - that might help... I mean the other thing is it's also weird because he's Christian..."

Harry, who had never been in a church before the funeral, shrugged.

"Not that he'd want me to convert or really care, or my children, but it's still - my parents are, okay, terrible at being parents, but they're good _people_ in a lot of other ways, and I've got my cousins and my aunts and uncle and I don't want to say I don't belong to them, and..."

"Well, what do they think about this?" Harry said.

"Harry!" Hermione protested. "How on _earth_ would I explain this without telling them about the Wizengamot and the House of Black? All they know is that he's my best friend's godfather!"

"So - hang on," Harry said. He realized for the first time that he had almost no idea how ordinary muggleborns handled these things. "How many of your family know you're magic? What do you _tell_ them? Didn't you say your parents left you with your aunt and uncle because of accidental magic before?"

"Yes, but they didn't say that I'd started exploding things when I got angry, they thought it would sound insane. We told them lot of lies, mostly," Hermione said, looking miserable. "I hate it, but the Ministry only makes an exception for parents of muggleborns because of Hogwarts lobbying them, and that's recent and it's technically executive policy and not even law, a lot of the time they used to just take us - whatever magical family found us, and they might adopt us, or they might raise us as servants. It's really horrible, I've been reading about the history since I found out about slavery still being legal for nonhumans in general--"

" _Still?_ " Harry hissed.

Hermione nodded into her knees. "There was a general abolition decree making it illegal to enchant humans to enslave them and defining muggles and muggleborns as humans about fifty years ago, and it sort of folded in, you know, _murdering_ muggles by mistake because they were trying to close the loopholes. House elves are only the tip of the iceberg, it's horrid. And that's part of why I feel strange about letting Sirius adopt me, I suppose, that history, although it's not the same - we wouldn't even do it until I was a legal adult and it wouldn't be a secret or anything..."

"So hang on, if your parents are an exception, when people marry muggles...?"

"It's still technically illegal to tell them about magic at _least_ until you have children, it's just impossible to prosecute everyone," Hermione said with distaste. "So they prosecute people who are too politically pushy, or in the way--"

"So if everyone's breaking that law anyway, why not just tell the family members you actually like?" Harry said. "Then you could ask their opinions, couldn't you?"

Hermione looked rather startled, as though breaking the law had somehow not occurred to the witch who had once proposed they brew Polyjuice Potion in a girl's bathroom. Then she threw her arms around him. "I need to call Rachel! She's my cousin, I used to visit her for weeks - I just couldn't tell her anything when I started Hogwarts..."

"Probably not until it's light out, though," Harry said, and Hermione started giggling again.

Hermione called her cousin Rachel early the next morning and initially got her flatmate; but after a few minutes she was passed over and rapidly began to talk very excitedly about a number of unfamiliar people. Listening, Harry had the impression that she had not spoken to anyone about her extended family in years. When she hung up she informed them nervously that Rachel would be coming over the next day for coffee; she, of course, had not been able to explain magic over the phone.

Rachel turned out to be a recent uni graduate with very Hermione-like bushy hair dyed a very un-Hermione-like bleached blond, a number of tattoos, and various political pins on her backpack. She took Sirius turning into a dog and back very well, in fact. Then she began to ask questions about the Wizarding world and the school Hermione went to, which inevitably led them around to the Ministry of Magic, the current political situation, and the war, and her face grew stormier and stormier in a way that made Harry think of Hermione's look when someone in front of her was misusing a library book. Finally she and Hermione ended up sitting in the back garden with a stack of twenty or thirty books about magical history and the Ministry. Harry left them to it.

By now the summer was nearly over. Cho came over for a few days the last week of August. She seemed torn between horrified, amused and deeply relieved to see the way Hermione wandered down for breakfast in the morning: hair even frizzier than usual, a visible hole in one of her socks, face planted firmly in her Arithmancy textbook, and absently smacking Harry in the shoulder with the spine to make him move over and give her a croissant from the bakery box. Cho and Harry commiserated over the impossibility of flying in London until Hermione threatened to upend the dirty dishwater over their heads, then went out and practiced dueling under Remus's supervision.

And, finally, it was September. Harry found at breakfast that he missed Sirius, and Remus, and in fact all of the others as well, already, even though they were almost all coming to see them off at the train. Sirius, winking, told him that he might say hello their first week; he had a meeting at the castle with Dumbledore.

"Really? What's it about?" Hermione asked eagerly.

"I thought it might be a surprise..." Sirius teased, then grinned. "Alright, alright. You know all the portraits in Hogwarts? The castle takes portraits that hang in buildings that are empty or to be demolished, or that don't get on with the families that inherit them anymore, it's one of the biggest collections of portrait space in Europe. 

"Cassiopeia asked if I'd arrange for her to stay there at least for a few years, so she can keep using the library and see people who aren't Blacks. She's had to hide that skull in her painting, but other than that Dumbledore seemed amenable, I wrote to him about it and I'm bringing her and a few others who are interested in leaving the family residences. You'll be able to talk to her this year even if you probably won't have privacy, I'll let you know where her portrait ends up in the castle."

"Really?" Hermione in particular was thrilled. Remembering all of the time she had spent talking about magical theory with Cassiopeia in Sirius's kitchen, Harry was unsurprised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Find this,](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/629802216025391104/the-glass-fortress-chpt-3-family-inheritance) and me, on tumblr!
> 
> Regarding the issue of slavery: canon limits explicit discussion of slavery to house elves. But it's also canon that a wide number of obviously sentient people are classified as non-human and questionably people with restricted rights, there's reference to trade in body parts of people - including muggles - and trade in some magical creatures who apparently understand speech (eg. hippogriffs), and the centaurs' specific arguments and insults revolve around whether Firenze is allowing the humans to treat him like livestock, all of which makes me think a private but legal trade in sentients other than/in addition to house elves is likely.
> 
> Regarding whether it's legal to tell family about magic: the fact that Dudley being Harry's first cousin, raised with him, isn't brought up as a defense to Harry performing magic in front of a muggle in OotP, as well as some weird background details like Seamus Finnegan's mother not telling his father about magic for apparently a pretty long time made me think this was a good compromise explanation.


	5. Term Begins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few pieces in this chapter are paraphrased/quoted from OotP chapters 11-12.

They went to the train in a large group: Harry, Hermione and Draco accompanied by Andromeda, Ted, Narcissa, Remus, Tonks and Sirius, although half of the adults tried to convince Sirius to stay home in case the platform was attacked.

"Don't be ridiculous," Sirius said wearily after hearing out several opinions on the subject. "If Bella _does_ show up I'm probably the last person she would curse. She's had plenty of chances. Now let's get the kids on the train before the place is so crowded we can't keep them covered."

When they were nearly on, Harry let Hermione and Draco pull ahead while they argued over Draco trying not to scuff his trunk, and turned back to Sirius. His chest felt tight. "So..." he said, looking at the platform floor.

"So," Sirius said, gripping his stick, and stepped forward to hug Harry tightly. "Another year at school? You'll have to write."

"I promise," Harry said. 

"You'll have your O.W.L.s this year, and it'll seem unbearable, but you'll get through it. I know you'll do well. Good luck," Sirius said, voice hoarse, and - to Harry's surprise - kissed his forehead before stepping back to let Harry jump onto the train. Harry was torn between the hope that no one had been watching and a fierce, unexpected pleasure. No one had ever done that before. Well, he supposed his mother must have, but not that he could remember.

He found Hermione and Draco with a carriage of mostly Ravenclaw students from their Arithmancy class. Feeling out of place and wishing for Ron, Harry started to draw back, but Hermione turned. "Oh, there you are! I'll catch you up later, Draco, Morag, Su," she said, waving, and with a flick of her wand to float her trunk, followed Harry out. "You haven't seen Ron yet, have you?" she asked.

Harry shook his head. They continued down the train carriage by carriage; Harry said hello to Susan Bones and Cho when he ran across them, but both were in already-packed compartments, so they elected to move on. Finally they located an empty compartment two carriages from the end and stowed their trunks. 

"Ron did say he'd be on the train," Hermione said anxiously. 

Just then the compartment door banged open. Harry turned hopefully, but instead of Ron, Parvati stood in the doorway, looking upset. "There you are - Hermione - can I come in?" she said anxiously, hand cupped around something.

"Go ahead, are you hurt?" Harry said, half rising.

"No, it's..." Parvati shot another look at Hermione and turned her hand so that they could see what she held: it was a Prefect's badge.

"Oh," Hermione said, and laughed carelessly, although Harry thought it was rather forced. "That."

"It shouldn't have been me!" Parvati said. "It's not fair, you've had the highest grades in _everything_ since _forever_ \--"

"I also broke into Snape's store room second year and robbed it," Hermione pointed out. "And last year I nearly got cited for misusing - Ministry property. You get second highest in Gryffindor a lot and you're _much_ better behaved."

"You broke into _Snape's_ \--" Parvati started to say, then changed her mind. "Look, you haven't been in trouble for any of that formally, have you? It's political, it's got to be your blood status and it's not fair. I'm going to go to McGonagall and tell her I'm not taking the badge."

Hermione winced. "It's okay," she said again, and lowering her voice, "It's not - I mean, it might be different if I wasn't muggleborn, I don't know, but that's not the only reason why. I got caught last spring... You know about the, um, chastity rule--"

Parvati let out a choked giggle. "Hermione!"

"Yeah. I got caught with Viktor last spring and they didn't expel me or anything on account of my grades, but I'm banned from holding student office now. Really, Parvati," she said, gathering steam, "I don't want to be Prefect. You know how much time I spend reading and I'd have to give a lot of it up. You deserve the badge," she said firmly, and hugged her.

Harry watched this display, and waited until Parvati had exited again, somewhat reassured, before he said, "You're upset, aren't you."

Hermione threw herself down again. "I don't know," she said, staring into her hands. The brittle smile was gone, and her face was now stormy. "It's true what I said to Parvati, she's better behaved and I really _don't_ have time, but I won't lie. I didn't think they would really apply that to me - McGonagall implied - and it's _usually_ by grades. I was wondering when we got our letters."

Harry had completely forgotten that Prefects would be chosen before fifth year, and he felt similarly slightly humiliated: who was closer to Dumbledore, who was more responsible in their year, than him? But, he thought, being chosen when Hermione _wasn't_ would have been horrible. He wasn't sure who had the highest grades of the Gryffindor boys, and it was true that he was in trouble even more than Hermione, who usually did not get caught.

Forcing a smile he said, "Yeah, but I bet the top student doesn't usually go around setting teachers on fire, 'Mione."

"And it's all for you that I did it!" Hermione said, swatting him on the arm with the closest book, but she was laughing. 

The train had started to move, and they settled in their mostly-empty compartment. Hermione let Crookshanks out of his carrier so that he could sprawl across the seat next to her, purring furiously whenever one of them reached over to pet him. When the snack trolley came by, they made a terrible mess flicking the more suspicious Every Flavor Beans for him to chase. Harry thought briefly that it made a nice change not having to worry about offending Ron by spending money either on him or in front of him, then pushed it down furiously as disloyal.

Forty minutes or so into the voyage, Ron arrived.

"Harry, Hermione!" he said, threw himself into an empty seat next to Harry, and furiously pulled a shiny golden P badge off his robes.

For a moment, Harry stared in frank disbelief. Dumbledore had chosen _Ron_ over him? 

Meanwhile Ron was talking: "--and you won't believe how the twins have been going on about it, honestly, it's such crap - Hermione, I can't believe they didn't pick you--"

"I was just telling Parvati," Hermione said, face gone flat again. "They couldn't. I got caught having sex with Viktor Krum last spring and now I'm banned from holding student office."

There was a thunderous silence in the compartment. Harry stared very fixedly at his hand, scratching Crookshanks on the ear.

"Er," Ron said, swallowing frantically, ears rather red, "They seriously - they _never_ enforce that rule--"

"That's what I thought, but I asked around and it's mostly pureblood girls who don't get in trouble for breaking it," Hermione said flatly. "And Karkaroff was the one who caught us - it was on the Durmstrang ship, Harry was there when I got back up to the castle - and he pitched a fit. Dumbledore and McGonagall had to appeal to my grades to stop him writing to the Board to get me expelled or something. So really I think I got off lightly."

"Right. Well," Ron said, floundering, "It'll be terrible trying to do it without you. Parvati's nice," he added rapidly, "But she's not - you. Say, are you and Krum broken up?"

"We're writing still, but yes," Hermione said, calming down significantly. "He's very sweet but I don't want to move to Bulgaria and he doesn't want to move to Britain."

"Right. So," Ron said, still somewhat squeakily. "How were your summers? How's Sirius?"

They settled down in the compartment and told Ron about the summer in the sort of detail that hadn't gone easily into letters; after a solid half hour of joint complaining about the Black relatives and Sirius being distracted by political and management problems and the paperwork Hermione had been helping with, Ron seemed satisfied that he had not been left out of anything too wonderful. He also accepted a third of their joint candy purchases easily enough, having been out of the carriage when the trolley came.

Still, Harry felt a faint stir of unease. It had not occurred to him over the summer how Ron would feel if Sirius _did_ adopt Hermione and he was the only one of them not family. But Ron already had parents, and five brothers and a sister.

The afternoon went on. The train seemed rowdier and louder than usual this year, most of its occupants having been cooped up at home for two months in case of attacks led by Bellatrix Lestrange. People dashed up and down, catching up with friends and enjoying the change of scenery. Several of their year mates stopped in to say hello, and Hermione - gritting her teeth harder and harder - had to give her explanation of not having a Prefect badge several more times. Reactions to the story varied; some people were sympathetic, but Harry had a terrible ominous feeling from the way others eyed each other or Hermione speculatively.

Around three o'clock Cho came by to say hello, accompanied by her friend Marietta. They didn't stay long, but she and Harry agreed to meet up on Saturday, outside if possible, to catch up on their first week of classes. Ron and Hermione had an enthusiastic conversation about the start of term feast throughout. Harry and Cho rolled their eyes at each other.

"I'm supposed to patrol the corridors on the train," Ron said, after Cho left, thoughtfully. "I can't take points, but I can punish people for misbehaving - I can't wait to catch the Slytherins--"

 _"Ron,"_ Hermione said. "You're not supposed to abuse your position! Besides, we're friends with Draco now, remember?"

"Yeah, but there's always Nott, and Crabbe and Goyle," Ron said happily. "And you know they'll do something to give me a shot. I'll make Goyle do lines, it'll kill him, he hates writing..."

Hermione pursed her lips disapprovingly. 

At last they arrived in Hogsmeade and hurried past Hagrid, calling the first years, to claim one of the horseless carriages. 

When they arrived inside, the Great Hall seemed somehow fuller than usual, filled with noise and movements as people exchanged news, shouted greetings to other tables, and eyed the changes in hair cut and clothing and height over the summer. Hagrid appeared at the staff table, waving to Harry and Ron and Hermione, and a few seconds later Professor McGonagall entered with an extremely long line of scared-looking first years. Their looks of fear gradually turned to embarrassment, relief and hilarity as the hat's song revealed that their only test was putting it on, and only a few minutes later Professor McGonagall was calling out, "Abercrombie, Euan," who stumbled to the hat and was promptly sorted into Gryffindor. Harry clapped and cheered loudly.

Slowly the first years were sorted. There seemed to be many more than at his own sorting. Harry felt as though he was starving to death, and could hear Ron's stomach in between cheers, by the time "Zeller, Rose" was sent to Hufflepuff.

Once the feast appeared and the first years were out of the way, Harry was able to study the staff table as he shoveled food onto his plate. In general it was similar to last year, but there was one newcomer in Sirius's place, presumably the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. This was a frankly alarming looking man with a face so covered in scars it seemed wooden. He had gray, grizzled hair and a chunk missing from his nose, but all of this paled in comparison to his eyes: one small and dark, but one a vivid, electric looking blue, round, obviously false even from a long distance away, and spinning rapidly and totally independently of the other.

"Look at the new Defense teacher," Harry said in an undertone.

"That _eye_ ," Hermione said, sounding slightly stunned.

Ron, however, was beaming. "That's Mad-Eye Moody!" he hissed. "He's supposed to be a hero from the last war, he was an Auror - half the cells in Azkaban are filled thanks to him. He's a friend of my dad's, I've met him a few times."

A memory stirred. "He's the one who trained Tonks!" Harry whispered, now equally excited. "She mentioned it over the summer."

As they watched, Moody turned to say something to Dumbledore, then withdrew a flask from his hip and took a drink, neglecting the pumpkin juice on the table entirely. Harry, who had been subject to Winky and Kreacher's complaints all summer about Sirius's household cooking for themselves, could not help but wonder what the Hogwarts house elves must think of this.

The feast went on. Harry said hello to their year mates, to Fred and George, and to the rest of the Quidditch team. Finally, after Harry had finished his steak-and-kidney pie and a slice of his favorite treacle tart, Dumbledore rose.

"Now that we are all digesting another magnificent feast, I beg a few moments for announcements," he said. "First years ought to know that the forest is out of bounds - and a few of our older students, as well." There was the usual notice about Filch's banned items as well, before Dumbledore went on, "We have had a change of staffing this year. I am delighted to introduce our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Moody."

Applause for Professor Moody was decidedly mixed. Some students, like Ron, Harry and Hermione, and Cho over at the Ravenclaw table, cheered loudly; others crossed their arms and glared at him, or at the floor. Several were students Harry knew were related to Death Eaters; he could see Cho's friend Carya Carrow nee Greengrass clapping very slowly next to her, face pensive. 

"You will be pleased to hear, no doubt, that fire damage to the Quidditch pitch and stands was repaired completely over the summer." Dumbledore was briefly interrupted by cheers at that announcement; Harry and Ron both clapped vigorously. Eventually the noise down enough for him to continue, "Tryouts for the House Quidditch Teams will take place this weekend, with slots for each house posted in the common rooms. 

"Many of you will recall the additional security measures that were placed last term, owing to the threat of Bellatrix Lestrange's escape. You will be pleased to hear that the school's protections have been strengthened over the summer. Students will be permitted to attend Herbology, Care of Magical Creatures and Quidditch practices and games outside, and permitted freedom of the grounds in general. However, no students will be allowed outside after sunset, except to return to the castle after classes that end after that time. Quidditch practices must be scheduled to take sunset times into account. We also ask that no student leave the castle completely alone, and that all students remain on the castle lawn and near side of the lake when outdoors, rather than venturing to the edge of the forest or around the far side of the lake. 

"Hogsmeade visits will resume, but the village will be more heavily patrolled by staff. Again, we ask that no student enter the village alone. If you are unable to locate anyone to go with you, you may approach your Head of House in advance of the visit to be paired with another student.

"Additionally, I have a very important announcement that will affect everyone. In light of the growing population of new students in recent years, the Ministry of Magic has decided it is important to evaluate Hogwarts' current accommodations and teaching." Hermione sat bolt upright at this, although Harry could not think what was so interesting about it.

"In order to determine the level of funding the school will receive in the coming years, whether it is necessary to hire new staff, and any other necessary changes, the Ministry will be placing inspectors at the school later this term. They will attend some of your classes, enter your common rooms and social spaces occasionally, and generally observe the school. I expect you all to treat them courteously and respect the importance of their duties. 

"Some of you will be aware that over much of your time at Hogwarts, the population of our students has been at an historical low. For this reason, staffing has been reduced, and many parts of the castle have been unused. However, our younger classes have happily increased over the past several years and the staff members are beginning to feel the strain. Depending on the outcome of these inspections, we may be adding further new staff after Christmas holidays, or perhaps as late as next year. I ask for your patience and respect during this process," Dumbledore concluded.

"Now, it is very late, and I know it is important to you all to be rested for class in the morning. Bedtime! Chop chop!"

Students broke out into whispers, but they were interrupted quickly by the Prefects. Parvati pushed her way towards Ron, saying, "Come on, we've got to show the first years up to the Tower."

"Oh yeah," said Ron, who had obviously forgotten. "Hey - hey you lot! Midgets!"

 _"Ron!"_ said Hermione. Parvati rubbed her forehead, looking pained. 

Hermione and Harry had to leave Parvati to shepherd Ron through the process of leading the first years up. The sixth year girls' Prefect gave them the password, and they went on up to the tower. Harry bid Hermione goodnight and proceeded alone to the dorm upstairs, where Dean and Seamus had arrived first and were in the process of decorating the walls besides their bed with posters.

"Hey, Harry," said Dean. "Good holiday?"

"Yeah, it was great," Harry said. "You?"

"Yeah, it was okay." Dean laughed. "Better than Seamus's anyway, he was just telling me."

"What happened?" asked Neville, placing a small, odd looking plant on his bedside cabinet with great care.

Seamus did not answer immediately, continuing to fuss with his Kenmare Kestrels Quidditch team poster. Eventually he said "Me mam didn't want me to come back.

"What?" said Harry, pausing in the middle of getting changed.

"She didn't want me to come back to Hogwarts," Seamus said. "What with Bellatrix Lestrange out of prison. I told her she was being ridiculous - for all we know she went to Ireland to hide from the Aurors, or to _France_ \- but..."

Harry felt a lurch in his stomach, again, thinking of when he had met Bellatrix last term.

"My parents are Muggles," Dean said. "I'm not stupid enough to tell them there's an escaped convict out... What about you, did your families make a fuss?"

"Gran's not happy," Neville said, looking miserable at this reminder. "She thinks Bellatrix Lestrange might be after my family, because of - anyway, she says I'm better off at Hogwarts than practically anywhere else now that the Triwizard Tournament's over."

"I wasn't allowed out by myself for the whole summer because she might be after me," Harry volunteered, feeling very strange to join in a conversation about family normally for once, "But it's like Neville said, Sirius thinks Hogwarts is safer."

"Gran thinks she was the one who murdered Emmeline Vance, not the smugglers she was investigating," Neville said. "She says the Ministry is lying because they don't want to face public backlash."

The conversation died on that unhappy note, and didn't resume before they all went to bed.

The next morning, Ron and Harry caught up with Hermione halfway across the common room on their way down to breakfast. Hermione was looking rather less bushy than usual; she caught Ron's stare and blushed. "Andromeda taught me some charms for dealing with curly hair over the summer," she said. "I was looking them up in books before and apparently the standard ones don't work on it. Parvati's a good Prefect," she added with forced brightness, "She'll be less distracted than me, anyway."

"Hermione," Harry said, as they made their way downstairs, "I know you dropped Muggle Studies and Divination mid year, but do you know if we're allowed to add classes?"

"If it's early in the term and the professor agrees to it," Hermione said, looking thrilled by this question. "What do you want to add?"

"I was thinking - I'm not sure how much more I'll get out of the Divination study. I was thinking I might ask McGonagall if I can swap it out for Arithmancy. I was having loads of trouble by myself last year, but Sirius and Cassie both think it's important."

"Go see McGonagall while she's passing out schedules," Hermione said, and nudged him along as soon as they entered the Great Hall, before he had a chance to say he hadn't decided yet.

Professor McGonagall pursed her lips when this question was put to her, and dug for his schedule. "We often have students who add Arithmancy late, Mr. Potter, but if you wish to take your O.W.L. this year you will have quite a bit of work to do." She tapped his schedule with her wand, and an appointment appeared immediately after lunch. "See Professor Vector and discuss it with her today. Does Mr. Weasley also wish to change his schedule?"

"I'm not sure," Harry said.

"Tell him to see me during break if he does," Professor McGonagall said, and moved on.

Harry perused his schedule at this point and groaned: he had double History of Magic and double Potions taking up the morning, although double Defense seemed likely to be an improvement after his free period in the afternoon. 

Angelina intercepted him before he could rejoin Ron and Hermione. "Hi, good summer?" she said briskly, and went on, "Listen, I've been made Gryffindor Quidditch Captain."

"Nice one," said Harry; Angelina's speeches were likely to be much less long winded than Oliver Wood's.

"Yeah, well, we need a new Keeper now Oliver's left. Tryouts are on Friday at five o'clock and I want the whole team there, all right? Then we can see how the new person'll fit in."

"Okay," said Harry, and she smiled brightly before going.

Ron, when Harry passed on McGonagall's question, was uncertain; he didn't want to continue the Divination study that Hermione had set him, but on the other hand he was reluctant to add a difficult subject like Arithmancy which he would already have to catch up on. "Maybe they'll add back some of the old electives, if the Ministry gives Hogwarts money for more staff next term," he said, staring morosely at his schedule. "When Mum and Dad were at school they had stuff like art and music with less homework..."

"You might as well keep on with Divination, I'll still be able to help you," Hermione said, and explained this somewhat surprising statement with, "Your essays are getting so much better. I hope Professor Vector lets you into our year, Harry!"

"I guess I don't really want to add another class this year," Ron said. "O.W.L. year's supposed to be horrid, my brothers were nervous wrecks... except for Fred and George, I mean."

"Surely even _they_ cared about their O.W.L.s?" Hermione said. "I mean, they affect what you can do after school and everything!"

"They got about three apiece," Ron said. "They're really set on this joke shop idea, they say they don't actually need qualifications for that, just research on the student body..."

Harry, thinking about this, said, "What do you two want to do after school?"

"I don't really know," Ron said. "Bill and Charlie both had stuff they were interested in, and even Percy and the twins knew what they wanted, but..." He trailed off unhappily. "The only thing I really like is Quidditch."

"You like Care of Magical Creatures," Hermione said from where she was sorting the books in her bag. "Both of you do, at least--" She lowered her voice, "When Hagrid's not moping."

"Yeah, but Charlie's already done that," Ron said.

"You shouldn't pick your entire career based on what your brothers _didn't_ do, Ron, you'll make yourself miserable!"

"What about you, Hermione?" Harry said hastily, before remembering that this was not a safe change of subject; there was at least one offer Hermione was thinking hard about, and he wasn't sure what she and her cousin had talked about over the summer.

"Well, I was thinking politics," Hermione said briskly, to his relief. "You remember - I was helping Andromeda over the summer with her paperwork for the Wizengamot, and Druella sometimes, too," she said for Ron's benefit. "Normally it's really hard for someone like me to get involved, but since I'm already working with the Blacks and there aren't enough people in the family, Andromeda said Sirius would at least hire me to stand as proxy after I graduate. I want to do something worthwhile, not just draw a paycheck."

Ron was brightening as this plan was elaborated on, to Harry's relief. "You'd be great at it," he said, "You're amazing at telling people what to do." As Hermione visibly tried to work out whether she should be angry, he said, "What about you, Harry?"

"I don't know," he said again. "I found out a little over the summer, and my family's, er, property isn't the same sort of full time job for a dozen people the Blacks' is, and it doesn't really pull in money anymore, but I still have the Wizengamot stuff... Hey, Hermione, maybe I can hire you to handle that for me, too."

Hermione laughed and swatted him with her bag. "Come on, we've got to get to History."

Their first morning was a miserable welcome back to school. Professor Binns seemed utterly oblivious to the fact that they had been away, except that his subject matter had changed; he spent the whole class droning on about giant wars before assigning them a foot and a half essay on the subject. Harry and Ron made their usual valiant ten minute effort to listen before giving up and playing hang man the rest of the period, to Hermione's exasperation.

They arrived at Potions with some trepidation. Harry had not seen Snape since his birthday, only received assurances from Narcissa that he would be have further tutoring over the year, and Narcissa did not seem to be aware this was anything more than advanced Occlumency. Snape had been his usual insulting self towards Sirius, but had been marginally more restrained towards Harry, at the very least in that he was willing to answer questions...

"Harry!" Draco called, coming in the room a minute or so after them and slightly out of breath. 

He was accompanied not by Crabbe and Goyle, who were no longer permitted to associate with him, nor by Pansy Parkinson, who was writing to him secretly but could not be seen to give him the time of day. Instead he walked in with a girl with a long chestnut braid who Harry thought was Carya's little sister Daphne, and another Slytherin girl in their year, who had curly hair and occasionally wore muggle accessories with her robes, and who Harry thought was called Tracey Davis. Theodore Nott was talking to Goyle, while Crabbe appeared to be the odd one out. Pansy Parkinson, Millicent Bulstrode and Blaise Zabini formed another trio on their side of the room.

"How was your morning?" Harry said in an undertone, not wanting to be rude but well aware he could not get away with talking in Potions the way Draco did.

"Fine, Herbology - come on, I want to sit with you, Hermione and Weasley can take a table, right?" Draco dropped his books on the table next to Harry without waiting for an answer.

Harry glanced at Hermione and Ron; Hermione shrugged agreeably, while Ron nodded, looking dubious.

"I was thinking," Draco said in an undertone. "If I'm working with you Snape should be less unfair to you, and Hermione can babysit Weasley by herself, you're really a lot better than him when you calm down--"

The door opened and Draco stopped talking abruptly.

Professor Snape swept in with the same predatory stalk as ever, robes swirling around him, and went to the head of the classroom. Harry watched him nervously, wondering what it would be: a return to the torments of previous years? Continued silence, as after Sirius called the attention of the Board to Snape's teaching? Something new?

"We begin," Professor Snape said slowly, "Your O.W.L. year. At the end of this year, you will all take an assessment designed to ascertain if I have managed to pound the basics of the art of potion making into your unfortunately inept minds over the past five years. Undoubtedly, many of you will fail." His eyes swept the room, but did not linger on any particular student. "You may be aware that I accept only students with excellent results into my N.E.W.T. classroom, which means that many of us will be saying a permanent goodbye at the end of this year... Something I am sure we are _mutually_ relieved by."

A nervous giggle came from somewhere in the Slytherin half of the room.

"Quiet," Snape said flatly, then went on, "In order to pass your O.W.L. examination, you will need familiarity with the potions in the curriculum and the theory of their brewing, sufficient to reproduce them without instruction. In order to succeed in a N.E.W.T. classroom, you will need much more. You will need to surpass the skill of following instructions in favor of understanding them, something I am certain many of you are incapable of. For this reason, those of you who wish to continue in my class might do well to open a few books that I have not specifically assigned - as torturous as that concept might seem."

This, Harry thought, was positively nice for Snape.

"Regarding the previous four years..." Snape began, and halted.

There was an awkward silence as it became apparent this was not just a pause for dramatic effect. Snape had never before seemed nervous, only alternating between coolly contemptuous and heated with fury, but now he looked almost anxiously over the classroom.

"Regarding our time together," Snape began again, finally, "I have... a confession."

The classroom was dead silent.

"It will not be news to any of you that I am not... temperamentally suited to teaching," Snape said. He turned and paced across the front of the classroom towards his desk, but the movement was avoidant instead of threatening. "Circumstance... compelled me to take this position and to continue in it. I would not have chosen employment that rendered me responsible for the instruction of eleven year olds voluntarily. I am well aware that I am abysmal at it." 

He pivoted to glare at them, as if to forestall a response, but Harry doubted any of them would have dared. They were all staring in shock. Harry felt something that was almost wonder growing.

"I am attempting to - do better," Snape said, and breathed out heavily. "If the Ministry deigns to hire more professors per subject after this term, I will likely be responsible for advanced students only in the future. This means that, disappointing as it may be to some of you, I _will_ continue to teach those who continue onto the N.E.W.T. level. I will - endeavor to put your past mistakes in my classroom behind me this year in preparing you for O.W.L.s, if you can do the same for me. "

"Now." With great relief, Snape turned and gestured, and instructions began to write themselves on the board. "We will begin today with the Draught of Peace. I will review the instructions and the reasoning for them before we proceed. Who can tell me why step four instructs you to add hellebore along with the other ingredients, and what will happen if you do not?"

It took several minutes and, at last, Hermione to break the silence. Even those students who Snape normally favored appeared deeply unnerved by this speech. When Snape - expression pinched - awarded Gryffindor points for her answer, Tracy Davis dropped her scales off the table with a loud clatter. Draco volunteered to answer the second question, and Potions class proceeded falteringly.

No one did their best work, unnerved by the change, but Harry still felt that he had learned more from the lesson than he ever had before in Snape's actual classroom. The moment the door shut behind them on the way out, everyone erupted into whispers.

"What on _earth_ \--" said Parvati.

"Has he lost his _mind?_ " That was Pansy.

"Someone tell Dumbledore to check for an imposter," Seamus Finnegan said.

Draco was smirking slightly; he waited until they had rounded the corner and separated a little from the others before saying in an undertone to Harry, Ron and Hermione, "Guess what it is?"

"Moody's drugging him?" Ron said.

"Close, but no. It's my mother," Draco said, triumphantly, and separated from them at the stairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Liked this? [Find it](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/630396051901267968/the-glass-fortress-chpt-4-term-begins), and me, on tumblr!
> 
> There are a few minor canon divergence things going on with Hermione and Ron in this chapter; Karkaroff wasn't afraid of someone finding his Dark Mark or distracted by it, Hermione wasn't distracted by someone trying to kill Harry and had the Time-Turner for a long time last year, and Ron's relationship with his family has also been altered some, which is why he's met Moody.


	6. The Imposters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am doing my best with Hagrid's accent.

They had lunch after Potions, and Harry was distracted throughout the meal by nerves about his meeting with Professor Vector. He was starting to wonder why in the world he had thought asking to switch an elective like Divination, which let him do more or less whatever he wanted, for the notoriously tricky Arithmancy class, particularly when he would be faced with either struggling to catch up two full years of work or being shown up repeatedly by third years. 

But the thought of tracking McGonagall down to tell her he had changed his mind was unbearable, so after eating he trekked up to the dormitory to get the books Cassie had had him reviewing last year, and the notes he had taken at the time. Hermione showed him the way to Vector's office as the lunch period ended, then dashed off to get to her Ancient Runes class, while Ron went alone to the library to begin his first Divination essay. Taking a deep breath, Harry knocked on the door.

Professor Vector's office was small, full of deep brown woods, and cluttered with papers and books. Just now she was sitting at a writing desk sorting through several scrolls; unusually for a teacher, her desk was oriented towards the window, so that when Harry came in to sit she turned her chair around to face him. The view from the window overlooked the drizzling courtyard, and pale gray light filtered in through gauzy red curtains.

"Well, Mr. Potter," Professor Vector said, studying him curiously. "I was a little surprised to see your name come up on my schedule, but there are always a few students who realize they need Arithmancy in fourth or fifth year. I take it you're one of them?"

"Er, yes, Professor," Harry said. "And my godfather thinks it's important. I've done some studying on my own - and with his help - last year..."

Professor Vector's face changed immensely at that announcement; she had been frowning at him almost disapprovingly, but when he said he had been working on his own her eyes lit up and she smiled for the first time. "Have you? Let me see, that will help quite a bit."

Uncertainly, Harry unloaded the books from his bag, and his notes. "I'm not sure how I was doing," he admitted, showing her the most recent problems. "Some of it makes sense, and especially the bits about how you can use it with magic, I thought that was interesting - my godfather helped me do some stuff, seeing how different spells combine..." He faltered, aware he was rambling. "But I don't know, getting the actual maths behind it was hard, before I could do that."

Professor Vector, inexplicably, was smiling.

"You had a muggle primary education, I assume?"

"Er, yeah," Harry said. He had liked maths alright in primary, in part because he had been in a different class than Dudley, and therefore had not been under constant risk of attack. "Does it matter?"

"The situation is somewhat reversed from your other classes there, Mr. Potter," Professor Vector said, skimming through his notes. He still could not tell what she thought of them. "While in most classes students with a muggle background are at a disadvantage - having to adjust to writing with a muggle quill, to theory they have never heard about before, to types of focus they have no experience with - muggle primary for the past century or so has been very beneficial for Arithmancy. Some of the wealthier students who grow up with private tutors are better off, or the children of scholars with relevant background, but in general my muggle raised students perform the best. The terminology and symbols we use are occasionally different - ah, I see you rewrote the problems using both here - but in general a muggle primary education covers most of the third year mathematics curriculum, and I see you seem to have grasped the last few pieces of it yourself here. 

"These notes would take you up to about Christmas fourth year - this is the lesson I cover after the holidays are over." She tapped his last page of notes while Harry tried not to gape. "I will be happy to accept you in my classroom, given that, Mr. Potter. I can offer you two choices. You may start with one of the fourth year classes, in which case you might receive some additional help with - ah, I see you had some trouble with some of the algebraic concepts, although this still appears to be a passing level - but you may be somewhat bored, or you can start with the O.W.L. students. 

"In that case you would need to spend some time catching up; we usually have a couple of weeks of review at the start of term, and much of the first two months consists of in depth explorations of concepts introduced in fourth year, so it shouldn't be unreasonable."

Harry wrenched his mouth closed, and said, "Could you show me about how much I'd need to catch up on, Professor?" 

On the one hand, this sounded like a lot of work; on the other he wasn't sure there was much point in taking the class if he couldn't sit the O.W.L., and taking Arithmancy _without_ Hermione in his class sounded like an utter nightmare.

"Let me see... If you find it's too much for you, you _can_ always move back to the fourth year class, Mr. Potter, it isn't a life time commitment. Here, this is the fourth year textbook." She flipped it open on her lap. "You would need to cover these chapters, and these two at the end. I'll give this to you to borrow, and you can let me know by the end of the week, shall we say? And you can sit in on Wednesday with your year and see if you feel you're following things alright - you _are_ free Wednesday mornings? The O.W.L. class Miss Granger is in meets for a double period first thing then, and a single period second hour on Friday."

Harry left feeling an odd mix of triumph and terror. He had never before had a teacher so instantly pleased with him.

He still had half the free period remaining, and his first two classes had already provided him with two and a half feet of additional homework, so he went to rejoin Ron in the library. Harry found him sitting in a table near the back of the library, frowning over a book about obscure Divination techniques.

"How's the essay going?" he asked, sitting down with an armful of Potions books in which to look up the uses of moonstone for Snape.

"I dunno," Ron said, squinting at the page. "I asked Professor McGonagall for a pass to the Restricted section for my first essay. I was talking to Bill about the independent study stuff, over the summer, and he mentioned that seeing the future isn't reliable for anyone but there are some scrying techniques that Gringotts uses for security, or the Curse-Breakers use when trying to get into a vault, so I thought it might make a good essay... I can't make out half the sentences in this, though."

"I bet Hermione can help," Harry said, flipping through _A Dictionary of Advanced Potions Ingredients_. "Or do you think the library has a reference on Divination terms?"

"Maybe I'll look," Ron said, looking cheerful at the prospect of an excuse to get up. "Watch my bag?"

"Sure," Harry said, finding 'moonstone' in the Ms and flipping out a fresh piece of parchment to make notes. He mused that while he wasn't sure how much he had gotten out of a year long study of prophecy, at least he had had a lot of practice setting and writing his own essays.

When there were ten minutes or so remaining in the hour, he and Ron gathered up their books and went to make their way to the Defense classroom. Hermione joined them a few minutes later with the crowd of Gryffindors at the door, looking cheerful. "Wonderful first class," she said. "Harry, what did Professor Vector say?"

"Er, she said I could start with the fourth years and be ahead or the fifth years and have to catch up," Harry said. "I'm supposed to sit in Wednesday with you and tell her if I think I can follow the lectures." Quickly, before Hermione could answer, he added, "Ron found some interesting stuff for his Divination essay, he was talking to Bill over the summer--" and turned to Ron.

Hermione was peering over Ron's shoulder to examine his introduction when they heard Professor Moody's clunking footsteps behind them and the classroom door abruptly unlocked. They hurried into the classroom unusually quietly as a group.

"Well," Professor Moody growled behind them, coming into the classroom. "Well, now..."

The classroom door shut with a bang, and they jumped. "CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" Moody roared, looking almost cheerful underneath his many scars. "That's the first lesson - go ahead and put those books away, you won't need them." He punctuated this declaration with a drink from his hip flask before he set it, too, aside.

There was an excited murmur beneath the rustle as they stowed their books. Moody proceeded to the front of the classroom and began taking the register, his magical eye sweeping the room in a slightly dizzying pattern. Just after Hermione declared herself present, the classroom door opened again. They jumped as one and looked back, to see...

A second Professor Moody enter, complete with wooden leg and magical eye. This one looked them over, then took a seat in the front row to the right of the class, nodding to the first Moody. Harry declared himself present after Parvati, but his mind was no longer on the roll. 

Sure enough, in not much time the door to Moody's office opened and yet a third Moody entered, this one stumbling slightly on the threshold with his wooden leg before taking up a post just outside

The class was now whispering avidly. The first Professor Moody smiled, an expression which twisted his face even more severely but at least suggested the intention of friendliness. He was apparently content to remain silent until the classroom door opened one last time; this time it was very soft, and several students were not looking in its direction when the fourth Moody roared, a second time, "CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" Dean Thomas knocked his quill off his desk and had to scramble to retrieve it.

"I've had a letter from Professor Lupin about this class, and I had tea with Professor Black over the summer," the final Moody said, sweeping them all with an unnerving stare from the back of the class and limping forward to join the first Moody at the desk. "You've had a pretty thorough grounding on creatures from Lupin, and a good overview of countering curses and dueling from Professor Black. I saw all of you lot participated in Dueling Club - I'll be helping Flitwick continue it this year, by the way."

"What you haven't had," said the Moody by the office door, "Is much practice detecting Dark magic, on artifacts, or on people."

"Professor Black taught you about magical mind control last year," said the second Moody, who had sat at one of the desks. "But you haven't had much on impersonation."

"I'll be teaching you about that this class," the original Moody said. "But first, we'll have a little test. One of us is your real Professor, and the other three are assistants I've brought in. They're all using different methods to impersonate me. Come on, now, any guesses?" he growled. "What are some means of pretending to be other people?"

Hermione's hand, as usual, was first in the air. The fourth Moody called on her after a moment and she said, "Polyjuice Potion, sir."

Harry hid a grin.

"Good. Take five points," the first Moody growled. "Any guesses about us, then? How do you identify an imposter using Polyjuice?"

"Well," Hermione said. "There are enchantments that can remove it, like Thief's Downfall, and a lot of the times they're set up around anywhere people might sneak into with Polyjuice. There was one on the entrance to Magical Law Enforcement in the seventies, I read about it for an essay for Professor Black last year. But I can't cast any of those--"

"Very tricky enchantments," the Moody by the office door said, nodding. "Impossible to do on the spot for anyone."

"--So," Hermione went on, "If you suspect someone's using Polyjuice, the best thing to do is watch for how often they eat or drink. Polyjuice Potion has to be renewed every hour, on the hour, so an imposter will have to take a dose from their own supplies that often - and they'll need access to a lot of hair from the victim, too, since they have to add more for each dose. 

"And, Professor, I've only been in this room for a few minutes, so if this were a real situation I'd want to wait and see which of you needed to drink during break, but since you want us to guess, and I saw one of you take a drink from your flask when we came in, I'd say the first Professor Moody in the room is using Polyjuice."

" _Very_ good," that first Moody said, looking impressed. "Take another five points. You also may want to search a suspected imposter's things; they'll need a stash of hair along with the potion itself. Now, who's got another method?"

Lavender had raised her hand and was talking about glamour and illusion charms, but Harry had had an idea. He was used to viewing magic directly after months of working with Druella over the summer, although it still took concentration to begin; the period of dangerous distraction Hermione had stumbled into last spring had been navigable more safely over the first couple of weeks of break with supervision.

He worked on quieting his mind, using the snitch construction Narcissa had taught him for Occlumency, then watched the thoughts that rose anyway as he focused on each of the Moodies in turn. You could feel magic being cast, but most people wouldn't notice it unless it was very powerful, or meant to affect the mind... but if you learned to pay attention you could analyze it that way...

The first Moody, the one who they now knew had used Polyjuice, had a foreign subtle energy around him and under his skin, like water in a fast moving stream, changing constantly. Harry made a mental note that this was what Polyjuice looked like, and then moved on. The Moody by the office had nothing unusual, although Harry thought he carried his wand in his boot, and his cloak had complicated spellwork tangled on it. The Moody sitting down in the front row had an equally complicated network of spellwork covering his face and hands entirely, although Harry could not identify the spells; and oddly, the Moody by the office door also had no noticeable magic on him, although his wand was up his sleeve and his cloak was oddly empty of magic.

Harry refocused on the room. Parvati was asking if they were allowed to use magic to try to banish illusions on the Moody imposters, and receiving permission. Harry was just trying to work out how to give his results, when he realized he couldn't. Teaching the magic sight technique was illegal, and while Sirius's parents were long dead and couldn't be blamed for teaching _him_ , the same wasn't true of Druella.

Harry gritted his teeth in frustration. It seemed that he was constantly ending up with evidence he couldn't actually use. He guessed that the Moody with magic covering his face and hands was using spells to hide his real face, but he had no idea how to legally detect them.

Parvati had just cast a spell that made the face and hands of the sitting Moody glow, and was receiving five points to Gryffindor. Harry realized that the fourth Moody at the head of the classroom was telling them about spells to detect glamours, and quickly began to scribble down the answers; it would not do to miss how to perform this task legally because he was annoyed he couldn't demonstrate himself.

Seamus, Parvati and Lavender, and finally Hermione, all performed different spells on the last two Moodies to no helpful results. Hermione in particular seemed to be getting frustrated as their spells came back saying that they were both undisguised, despite the obvious fact that at least one was an imposter. Hermione asked about muggle stage makeup and received another five points, but when Lavender volunteered makeup remover from her bag and attempted rubbing it across each Moody's cheek and hand in turn, nothing came off. Harry thought over each Moody's entrance - the last one had come in, shouted at them, and come to sit at the front desk, while the standing Moody had opened the door, stumbled over the threshold, and stayed standing...

"Professor?" Harry said, raising his hand. "I think the version of you by the office is the last imposter."

"Mr. Potter," the fourth Moody growled thoughtfully. "And why do you say that?"

"When each of you came in, sir, that Moody stumbled over the threshold, like he's not used to the wooden leg, and then stayed there, standing. If he thought he might trip over the leg, he wouldn't want to move. But I'd guess that you might not otherwise want to stay standing a long time, if you have a lot of battle injuries, sir," Harry said, thinking of Cho's mother.

"Very good," the standing Moody said, to Harry's surprise. "One of the most important ways of identifying an imposter is _behavior_."

"Now," the fourth Moody, who was probably the real teacher, "Can you think of any means someone could have used to impersonate me that wouldn't respond to any of these spells - or any other detection charm, I'll give you a hint - but can't be removed through muggle methods, either?"

His classmates were taking guesses, but Harry suddenly was confident he knew the answer. 

"Sir," he said again, when he had a chance. "Is that Auror Tonks?"

There was a beat, and then all four Moodies burst into laughter at once.

"You've caught me!" Tonks cried from the office, and suddenly Moody's face was melting away, her hair shrinking and turning a bright bubblegum pink, while one eye shrank and the other grew. 

"You'd have met Tonks last year, wouldn't you, Potter?" the fourth Moody, the one Harry had identified as genuine, said. "Very good, take five points. Tonks here," he said, turning to the rest of the class, "Is what we call a Metamorphmagus, and what her classmates in Auror training called a _effing cheater_. She can change her appearance by effort alone - it's an inborn talent, very rare, doesn't respond to any sort of magical detection. She could walk through even a Thief's Downfall disguised and nothing would happen, because she doesn't have a real face to reveal. 

"You almost certainly won't run into another Metamorphmagus - there are less than ten families in the world that carry the trait, and Tonks is the only British one in three hundred years. So. Why'd I bring her today?"

There was a pause; then Dean Thomas volunteered, "Harry figured it out was her because of her acting strange, right? So, it's to show us that if we aren't coming up with anything magical, we should trust our instincts if something doesn't seem right, even if we don't know exactly how it was done."

"Take five points," Moody said. "Now, if you weren't already taking notes, get them out - I'll put up those spells we talked about already on the board. The first one we're going to go over is _Discoperio_ , which is how you remove those illusion charms..."

They spent the rest of the period copying down notes rapidly. Professor Moody demonstrated how to strip illusions off of a person after they finished practicing detector spells, revealing the second Moody to be a tall, black wizard with one earring, who introduced himself as Auror Kingsley. Finally, the very first Moody's Polyjuice wore off an hour into the lesson, revealing - to Harry's surprise - Cho's mother Mrs. Lin, who grinned at him in particular as Tonks went to get her floating wheelchair out of Moody's office.

Two other classes had already had Moody, the first year Ravenclaws and the mixed seventh year N.E.W.T. class, and word spread quickly about his lessons. The N.E.W.T. students had had a similar lesson on imposters, while Professor Moody's Auror assistants had helped the first years through an obstacle course meant to show them how resourcefulness could make up for not knowing much - or any - magic yet. In the midst of the chatter about this at dinner, Harry cornered Draco, who came over to talk to Hermione about their first Runes class of the term.

"What did you mean about your mother and Snape?" Harry whispered, in a lull between homework checking. 

"Oh, that," Draco said dismissively, as though he hadn't been aware it would drive Harry mad all day, but there was a glint in his eyes. He glanced around to check for eavesdroppers, then lowered his voice so that only Harry, Ron and Hermione could hear. "Mum asked me to write to her about Snape's lessons to see if he's doing what she told him to, I've got to go up to the Owlery when I'm done eating. You three know they're friends, right?" 

Draco paused for a split second and then went on, "They had this _blazing_ row over the summer when he came to see her at Grimmauld Place - I mean, normally neither of them really _shouts_ when they're angry, they just go over all caustic and make threats." 

Harry had been shouted at by Snape too often to credit this description, but he supposed it might well be true from Draco's perspective. "What did they fight about?" he asked eagerly.

"About Snape's job. I mean, like he said in class, it's no secret he _hates_ teaching. Dumbledore got him out of prison after the war, and I always just assumed he stayed at Hogwarts because he wanted to make sure Dumbledore had a reason to keep doing it. _Apparently_ , at least according to Mum, he was doing it because he expects the - You-Know-Who to come back, and he thinks having intelligence on what Dumbledore's been doing all along might make up for lying to stay out of prison..."

"So they fought about him planning to go back to Voldemort?" Hermione said breathlessly.

Draco twitched at the name, but didn't actually object. "Yeah, that's what I heard. Snape said he'd be an idiot to just assume he'd somehow circumvent - whatever Voldemort did to ensure loyalty, I guess, I didn't really understand what I heard of that part - and Mum _slapped_ him, and told him that if she was going to risk her life refusing the Dark Lord's summons he could at least support her. 

"Snape said something about spying - I suppose what he told the Ministry about spying for Dumbledore might be true - and Mum told him that - well, she said, 'I understand that you're determined to live in misery to make up for your adolescent idiocy, but if you're going to give your life away I'll have it rather than letting it go to the likes of Albus Dumbledore.' That was when they started shouting at each other about whether - being a double agent, or maybe just teaching at Hogwarts, was as bad as committing suicide? I didn't understand all of it, and I was afraid they'd catch me eavesdropping and be really angry by then, so I left. But then Mum came and found me and said that she'd made him an ultimatum, that he either find a way to make teaching tolerable for himself and his students, or quit his job and damn Albus Dumbledore, and in return she'd _make_ Sirius stop him getting sent to Azkaban if Dumbledore turned on him--"

"Oh, I bet Snape _loved_ that," Harry said.

"I didn't hear what he said to that part, but I imagine so." Draco gave a tiny twitch of a shrug. "I have no idea what Mum has on him, either, although it must be fairly devastating if she could get him to apologize to all his classes to stop it getting out. Mum's a ferocious blackmailer, though, and she _has_ known him for over a decade. I'm not surprised. Want to come with me when I mail my report?"

Harry and Hermione walked up with Draco to the Owlery, but Ron excused himself, muttering vaguely about something he needed to do. Harry supposed he might only be uncomfortable spending time with Draco, something he and Hermione were now very accustomed to after the summer. He hoped that this was not going to cause problems between all of them as he found Hedwig and gave her a few owl treats and Draco tied a letter to one of the school owls.

Unfortunately, this meant that Harry was alone with Draco and Hermione when Hermione mentioned that Harry was swapping into Arithmancy. Draco was equally pleased to hear he would be sitting in on their class that Wednesday, and the two of them badgered him for the entire walk back about which lessons he needed to catch up with, devising absurdly unrealistic study plans; Draco was obviously of a similar academic bent to Hermione. Harry hoped that he would be able to keep up with the O.W.L. class, because the alternative seemed likely to be dealing with a combination of insults, nagging and moping from the two of them in turns.

They returned to Gryffindor to a furious argument between Parvati and Fred and George; apparently Fred and George had signed up first years to test some of their new products, possibly without fully explaining the effects. Parvati as Prefect felt honor bound to interfere and was receiving only lackluster encouragement from one of the older Prefects. She rounded on the two of them when they entered and then faltered, realizing Ron was not actually with them - although Hermione's threat to write to Mrs. Weasley about the twins was probably more effective than another Prefect would have been.

Tuesday was equally drizzling and cold, and Professors Flitwick and McGonagall also began their classes with lectures on the importance and difficulty of O.W.L.s, although Professor Flitwick started them out with review of Summoning Charms, while Professor McGonagall immediately set them the fiendishly difficult Vanishing Charm on snails. The only student who was successful in Transfiguration, predictably, was Hermione. 

The three of them rushed down to lunch and ate hurriedly, all feeling overwhelmed by the amount of work piling up after only a day and a half of class. Draco did not join them for lunch that day; looking over at the Slytherin table, Harry saw him sitting with the same girls he had come into Potions with. He was doing one of his usual impressions - Harry hoped a less malicious one - for Daphne Greengrass, who seemed uncertain whether she thought it was funny or not.

They had Care of Magical Creatures after lunch, so they left early to get their rain cloaks from the dormitories before heading outside to the lawn outside Hagrid's cabin. There, somewhat to Harry's surprise, they found no large, ominous looking creatures, but a number of what looked like moving twigs.

"Right, so," Hagrid said, nervously clearing his throat when the class had gathered. "We had a good year last year - interestin' creatures--"

There was an uncertain murmur in response; while the Skrewts, who had occupied a very large percentage of the year, had been horrible, they had also covered nifflers, unicorns, thestrals, and several nocturnal animals which could reasonably be described this way.

"Now it's time for yer O.W.L.s at the end of the year, so's we've got to cover some stuff y'haven't had a chance to see yet, just fer the exam," Hagrid said. "If we get finished up with 'em quick enough, we can go back ter some real interesting stuff, but it'll do y'good to know about some of this, too. Now, we're startin' today off with bowtruckles..."

They took notes on bowtruckle habitat - wand wood - and behavior, before being turned loose on the collection on the table to feed them wood lice and conduct observations of them directly. This was actually a very good lesson for Hagrid; he tried to express this confusion both quietly and tactfully to Hermione and Ron, feeling relieved that Draco had not elected to join them for this class.

"I suppose it's the inspections," Hermione said, equally quietly, sketching the bowtruckle they were sharing. "Either Hagrid's worried or Dumbledore talked to him or something... Or I suppose it might just be that it _is_ O.W.L.s, I remember the O.W.L. class had less to complain about than us last year and the year before. The problem is that there just isn't that much _on_ the exam for this class, so he's got too much time to cover whatever he thinks is interesting..." She glanced over her shoulder nervously to make sure Hagrid had not heard.

They ran into Ginny on their way from Care of Magical Creatures to Herbology, accompanied by a wispy blond Ravenclaw girl in her year with eyes that seemed rather too large for her face; but aside from Ginny's hurried, "This is Luna - Luna, this is Harry and Hermione--" they had little time to talk. They had to hurry on into the designated greenhouse, where Professor Sprout gave them yet _another_ lecture about their exams and followed up a physically exhausting lesson with yet another essay as homework.

By the time they got back up to the castle and had finished warming showers, all anyone in their year wanted to do was sleep; but they all had mountains of homework to complete, so the new fifth years trooped down to the common room, a few leaving to work in the library. Ron had left the showers before Harry, so he was surprised to find Hermione sitting with Dean and Neville.

"Did Ron go back to the library to work on Divination?" he asked, thinking vaguely of joining him, and dreading taking all of the stairs again so soon.

"He didn't say." Hermione frowned, petting Crookshanks. "That scrying essay he was working on sounds interesting, I almost wish I'd thought of it - but I talked to Professor McGonagall about my thoughts about computer models and Prophecies since Professor Snape talked her into saying I couldn't do anything practical on my own after last year. I got Tonks to take me to buy some muggle books on computers over the summer, so I want to work on a project with that."

"My mum's a computer engineer," Dean said, surprising them both. "If you think you might want to ask someone questions I could see if she'll let you write."

"That's really nice of you, please do," Hermione said, fishing in her bag. "--I thought she was an artist?"

"Er - my birth mum's the artist, the one I mean is my stepmother," Dean said. 

"Did you track down your father, then?" Harry asked, getting his own books out. He had finished Snape's essay on moonstones the previous evening, and Hagrid's bowtruckle study in class, but he still had homework for History, Defense, Charms, Transfiguration and Herbology to complete. He had better get started on Transfiguration next, as he had it tomorrow as well.

Dean was hesitating, and Harry was starting to regret saying anything, as he knew well what it was like to be cross-examined on your own life. Finally he said quietly, "No, they're the ones who are together - my mum and my stepmum, I mean, it was when we were in third year. That's where my sisters came from all of a sudden, they're my stepmum's from before she got divorced."

"Oh, that must have been complicated with you at Hogwarts," Hermione said, saving Harry figuring out a tactful response to this. "When did your mum tell her about magic? I mean, she must have if they wouldn't mind me writing?"

"When I came back for the summer, yeah," Dean said. "Gave me kind of a start - I got home and there was this woman I'd never met in the kitchen making tea--"

They laughed. "Did anyone figure out which page that Vanishing Spell is on in the Transfiguration book?" Harry asked.

"I found it earlier," Neville said, to his surprise, "It's page twenty-three - of course that doesn't help me understand any of it..."

"Let me see," Hermione said, sighing in exasperation, but as she proceeded to explain the chapter to all three of them for the next half hour Harry couldn't complain too much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Liked this? [Find it on tumblr](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/631082008849874944/the-glass-fortress-chpt-5-the-imposters), and me!


	7. Fraternization

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some portions of this chapter are adapted, quoted or paraphrased from OotP chapters 13-14.

On Wednesday morning, Ron came to breakfast late and spent it skimming through his Transfiguration textbook, muttering about needing to get his homework done while everyone was at Divination. Harry and Hermione exchanged mystified glances at this strange behavior, but they didn't have time to interrogate Ron much; they had to go to Arithmancy together.

Arithmancy was taught in a classroom with tiered seating rather like an amphitheater, circling around a blackboard and podium at the very bottom where Professor Vector stood. Harry might have liked to hover by the back and feel less exposed, but before he had a chance to sit down Hermione dragged him bodily to the first row of seating, where she dropped her books next to Draco and one of the Slytherin girls he had walked into Potions with.

"Good, you got here before anyone fought us for the seats," Draco said, moving the bag and books he had scattered across them. "Harry, this is Daphne Greengrass; Daphne, Harry Potter."

"A pleasure," Harry said, and belatedly remembered not to offer his hand first. 

Daphne extended her own, and shook his hand coolly. "Likewise. Granger," she added, nodding to Hermione. "Has anyone seen the other new students?"

"Loads of people add Arithmancy late," Draco said as explanation to Harry. "There's only one mixed class for our level, but there'll be some people who are starting late and caught up part way like you, and some people who already started late and did two years' work last year."

"Are there many older students already in the class, then?" Harry said, feeling less nervous about his chances of standing out.

"Jonquil and Fern Zeller joined us in third year, they're seventh year N.E.W.T. students now, but they'll sit Arithmancy O.W.L.s with their N.E.W.T.s," Hermione said. "They're twins. And there's Leon King coming in now, he's in sixth year, he started with us last year."

"I've spotted one new person," Daphne said. "That's Eleanora Burke, she's a sixth year in Ravenclaw."

"Second, counting Harry," Draco said. "That makes - seventeen, right?"

"That's probably as many as she'll want in one class," Hermione said. 

They were joined in their row by Tracey Davis, who dropped into the seat on Daphne's other side, almost panting for breath, then shook Harry's hand readily. Unlike Daphne, she also smiled when they were introduced.

Then the door was closing, and Professor Vector cleared her throat. The seventeen students were clustered mostly around the bottom of the amphitheater in the first few rows, with the exception of two older girls Harry guessed must be the Zeller twins. They looked much less alike in face than Fred and George, but both had black hair and fair skin.

"Welcome, everyone, to approximately fifth year Arithmancy," Professor Vector said. "Everyone who is taking the O.W.L. exam for this subject should take it at the end of this year. We have two new trial members this year; everyone, please welcome Eleanora Burke, from sixth year Ravenclaw, and Harry Potter, from fifth year Gryffindor." There was scattered polite applause to this, and Harry felt his face burn. 

"Just like last year, we will begin with a review of the most important and the trickier material from last year, which should cover the next few weeks, before delving further into some of the subjects we only began last year, and introducing some entirely new ones. Our last month of class this year will be devoted to reviewing those concepts that are particularly important for your O.W.L.s, assuming we finish the new material in time. I need not tell you that these exams are very important for your futures, particularly for those of you who are taking this class specifically because you need the qualification for your desired careers.

"My office hours this year will be after dinner to curfew on Tuesdays and Thursdays, as well as Sunday afternoons from noon to five. I urge any of you who are having trouble with the material, who don't feel you completely understood a lecture or a homework assignment, or who anticipate trouble with material coming up to come and see me then. Those of you who haven't had me as a professor before," and she glanced between Harry and Eleanora Burke on the other side of the classroom, "May have heard that I am strict about students completing their homework when I assign it; however, I assure you that I do not bite, and I regard it as a mark of the highest intelligence to seek help when you need it.

"Now, before we get bogged down into the swamp of review, I'm going to demonstrate something we'll all be able to do in class by Christmas..."

Professor Vector turned and cast a Shield Charm over a portion of the board, then five neat jets of red light Harry thought were probably Stunners at equal points around it. Her final spell created a ball of blue paint that splattered over the shield. To Harry's surprise, this last spell shattered the shield completely, leaving a blotch of blue in the center of the shield and five rays of paint extending to each of the points she had cast the Stunners on.

"--Which is the benefit of fully understanding the mathematics involved in your casting," she said, and vanished the paint. "I am, I am not afraid to tell you, neither particularly powerful nor especially quick-thinking; but I know exactly what the calculations are for my standard spellwork, and I can estimate that of other people's, which means I am in an unusually good position to _know how my spells will interact_. That is one of the benefits of Arithmancy, even for those of you who will never have any interest in creating new spells or encounter unknown ones in the course of your work. Now. Everyone, please turn to chapter three in your books..."

Harry spent most of the lecture frantically copying things down and occasionally whispering questions to Hermione; in the end he thought he had missed almost a quarter of the information, but his interest had been raised. After all, dealing with unknown spellwork was exactly what he expected to do when trying to counter Voldemort's immortality.

He was, however, almost unhappy to realize he would be able to keep up in this class if he worked hard enough. It would be better than looking like an idiot in front of the fourth years, but it was already looking like a difficult and stressful year ahead in his other classes.

The rest of the week continued as it started. Potions that Thursday was nearly bearable, although everyone was still extremely jumpy. Snape's change in behavior held to the extent that rather than failing half the class for Monday's lesson without a word, he brought out the vials he had graded and forced them to undergo a discussion of which errors had led to which results and why. In addition to being excruciating, the review added to the previous discussion probably made up more than Harry had learned in Potions in the previous four years of Snape's class combined.

He also held Harry back and told him that his Legilimency lessons would begin Tuesday night at eight o'clock and continue on that day unless there were problems. He added that, as his guardian was no longer present to provide an excuse and they would be studying more seriously proscribed magic, he was to tell anyone who asked that he was undergoing an independent study with Snape. For this reason, Snape added, he had better actually keep up in class enough to make it plausible.

Harry spent the lunch period sitting with Cho and several of her Ravenclaw friends; he did not want to talk about anything too private surrounded by Cho's hangers on, but he complained about his O.W.L. course load and received sympathetic teasing from the sixth years, who had done it last year. Xiulan, who was now in fourth year, shuddered theatrically and announced that she was going to sit with the other fourth years, who still experienced happiness in their pre-O.W.L. level state.

Harry had another free period after lunch, but while Hermione had gone off to Ancient Runes Ron seemed to have vanished completely. He was just deciding where to look when he was pulled aside.

"Harry!" Sirius said, making him jump before he remembered Sirius alluding to a visit to Hogwarts last week. His godfather was accompanied by Dumbledore, and oddly, Madam Pince. "We were just going to find a good spot for Aunt Cassie in the library. Are you busy?"

"No, I'd love to come," Harry said, ignoring Madam Pince's dubious glare. 

"I regret my desk calls, so I will leave you to the pleasure," Dumbledore said amiably. "Do tell your aunt I'm pleased to have her again; but I find that if I leave my office for too long, angry owls begin to seek me out in the corridors."

"She's going in the library, then?" Harry said, directing this remark halfway between Sirius and Madam Pince.

"The headmaster thought it best to avoid _interference_ with the books," Madam Pince said with a sniff, and led the way. Wondering what on earth that meant, Harry followed. 

The library was singularly dark - sunlight damaged old books - and winding, with few portraits inside, but the three of them eventually located a bit of blank wall over the study area that bordered the Restricted section. The spot seemed to please Sirius and Madam Pince for reasons Harry could not discern. At this point Cassiopeia's portrait itself was removed from an expandable bag, and once her approval was given, she was placed on the wall, to the interest of various students.

The skull was, as Harry had been warned, gone, and the mirror now hung on the wall next to Cassiopeia's desk. She was otherwise as she had always been. Sirius put up a blank brass plaque like those under many of the castle's portraits, which immediately morphed to identify her as Lady Cassiopeia Black, Renowned Scholar of the House of Black, Born 1910. Sirius frowned at it, but did not comment.

Harry said a reluctant second goodbye to Sirius, then made his way back up to Gryffindor tower to get his books before Defense. He was just reaching the top of the stairs when he spotted Ron lurking behind a statute, clutching his broomstick. He jumped in surprise, seeing Harry, and attempted to hide it behind his back.

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing!" Ron said hastily. "Why?"

Harry frowned. "Come on, you can tell me. What are you hiding for? We've got Defense soon."

"I'm - it's from Fred and George," Ron said quickly. "They just went past--"

"But you've got your broom," Harry said. "Have you been flying?"

Ron went extremely red. "I - I'll tell you, but you have to promise not to laugh, alright? I - I thought I'd try out for Gryffindor Keeper, Mum bought me a new broom over the holidays because I made Prefect, and now I've got a decent one... Go on. Laugh."

"I'm not laughing," said Harry, slightly mystified. Ron blinked. "It's a brilliant idea! It'd be really cool if you got on the team! I've never seen you play Keeper, are you good?"

"I'm not bad," said Ron, gradually going from mortification to relief. "Charlie, Fred and George always made me Keep when they practiced..."

"So that's where you've been disappearing to?" Harry said. "Practicing?"

"Every evening, and my free periods," Ron said. "I can't go outside alone, so it's been a bit of a pain, but a few of the other students who want to try out Keeping got together so we could prepare... Plus I begged Neville," he admitted with some embarrassment. "He's got the same free periods as me, but he can't really fly well, he just studies in the stands."

"You should have told me so I could help!" Harry said. "Come on, we'd better get to Defense."

"Maybe tonight," Ron said, slowly looking cheerier.

Between the addition of helping Ron practice and his frantic attempts to review Arithmancy and complete homework before his second class Friday morning, the next day flew by. Very soon it was five o'clock Friday night, and it was time to make his way down to the Quidditch stands for the tryouts. Hermione had elected to come with them to watch Ron, saying that it would be boring to go to the library by herself. Remembering how frequently she had disappeared last spring, Harry wondered if she was missing Viktor, or only having something to do with any free time she managed to find.

Thinking of the library, Harry belatedly remembered to tell Ron and Hermione about Cassiopeia's portrait, and they agreed that they would have to go up and say hello to her as a group afterward. They had Astronomy at midnight tonight, and since Harry and Ron had to attend the Quidditch trials anyway, there was no use trying to go to bed in between. They separated as they reached the pitch; Harry went to join the rest of the team clustered around Angelina, while Ron went down to the other contestants and Hermione to find a seat in the stands. 

Angelina waved Harry over rapidly; she was discussing strategy with Alicia and Katie, while Fred and George listened.

"--So the problem is if we do one on one trials I'm not sure we'll actually be finished by dusk," she said; including Ron, there were seven contestants, so given that they would need time to warm up Harry could see her point. "But if we do two at a time, and have three of the other contestants playing Chaser, that will give me an idea - I think we'll do a lap around the stands to warm up, and then three penalty shots each, and then twenty minutes of free play for each pair; the last one can go opposite Katie, she's the best substitute Keeper. 

"Everyone, keep your eyes on the contestants, you might see something I miss. Harry, we're not playing with a Snitch just now, but I want you to buzz the Keepers during free play, loop them, give them a hard time and see if it distracts them. Fred and George, the same to you."

Instructions given, Angelina led them over to the semicircle of contestants and got them to introduce themselves. Trying out alongside Ron were two hopeful second years who were only just old enough to play, two third years, one fourth year, and a sixth year. 

The warm up had been a good idea for an obvious reason: it made it immediately apparent that the fourth year could barely fly. Angelina did not actually tell the boy to go home, but Harry mentally discounted him, and he could feel the other team members doing the same. After, Angelina had the team watch from the air while the Keepers took their spots one at a time and tried to defend against her, Katie and Alicia in rapid succession, trying to avoid going over time.

Hovering above the goal hoops, Harry thought that the first contestant, the first third year boy, was pretty bad, the second unremarkable and the third pretty good. He was relieved when Ron made all three saves, one by the skin of his fingers, but two other contestants did as well, the sixth year boy and the third year girl. He would have to watch those two during free play, he decided.

Then Angelina was grounding them and making assignments for which team members would fly which positions together. The first pair was the better second year, the girl, with the fourth year who hadn't been able to fly in a smooth circle during the warm up and had fumbled two out of three saves. Harry rose and circled over the pitch, readying for the best moment to dive distractingly through the hoops.

It was sort of fun, he thought later, buzzing the fourth year boy and hearing him shout indignantly after him, flying just to cause trouble without any regard for the other Seeker or the Snitch. He looped lazily up again, flitting through one of the hoops guarded by the second year girl, who glanced to the side at him and didn't otherwise move, tensely watching the Quaffle draw nearer.

Ron was up next, opposite Katie. Harry hoped this meant Angelina felt he was good enough she wanted to concentrate on watching him, although she had put the other two contestants Harry thought were the best against each other. Perhaps there was something he was missing about Keeping, Harry thought, rocketing upward to hover irritatingly in the corner of Ron's field of vision.

"Piss off, mate!" Ron shouted, but he was laughing, not angry, and his eyes were ahead, on Alicia passing to the sixth year boy. The Quaffle came roaring into the goal area, and Harry shot up again, moving to distract; he groaned mentally when he saw Ron start to follow his movement, then reverse course and - barely - miss the Quaffle; but when a moment later Angelina took it back into position and tried to make another goal, Ron totally ignored Harry's loop-d-loop around him, ignored Angelina's feint and grabbed the Quaffle deftly, then threw it halfway back across the pitch.

Finally, the sky had gone violently pink above the [mountains], and they were spiraling down to discuss the results. Angelina glanced anxiously over her shoulder at the sunset before beckoning the team.

"Right, so it's Hooper or Weasley," she said abruptly.

"Not Frobisher?" Alicia said, frowning. "She was good." Harry thought Frobisher had been the third year girl.

"She told me herself earlier she'd put Charms Club over practice if they conflicted," Angelina said. "She's in half the clubs in the school, I think she just tried out for completion. I didn't want to tell her she couldn't, but I wouldn't have taken her unless everyone else was terrible."

"That's no good," Harry said, trying not to show relief that Ron had made it into the final estimation.

"Hooper definitely flew better than Ron," Fred said, as though he was trying to get this out of the way quickly.

"Yeah, Ron missed one save and Hooper didn't miss any," Angelina said. "But he wasn't working with us well as a Chaser, and honestly - well, you heard him going on earlier about missing the start of dinner for tryouts. Katie, you're in his year, is that going to be every practice?"

Katie, who hated to criticize people, frowned. "It might be," she said slowly.

"So I'll take Weasley as a starter and tell Hooper he's tapped as reserve if we're out a Keeper for any games," Angelina said, with evident relief to have made up her mind. "I'll break the news and we can get inside."

Harry was pretty sure Ron, at least, knew before Angelina said a word from the way Harry grinned at him as they made their way back to the contestants.

Ron was jubilant, and they put off going to see Cassie so that he could go to the common room and celebrate until well after curfew. The team brought out butterbeer that had been stashed for the new Keeper's welcome, and Angelina announced the first practice would occur tomorrow at two o'clock.

As he wasn't sure how late Angelina's practices would turn out to run, Harry went to find Cho at breakfast the next morning at the Ravenclaw table and ask if she wanted to go for their walk immediately; the day had dawned brilliantly sunny and warm. Cho agreed readily and suggested they take their breakfast outside, although she was slightly out of breath.

"I've just come from the Owlery, I forgot it was my mum's birthday until I was waking up," she admitted, tucking a pastry into a napkin. "Does Gryffindor have a new Keeper, then?"

"Trying to get intelligence on us?" Harry asked, grinning; but as practices were public and their first would be in a few hours he saw no harm in adding, "Yeah, we do, it's Ron."

"Tell him I said congratulations," Cho said, leading the way out of the Great Hall. "Do you want to walk around the castle, maybe? Since we can't go around the lake the whole way..."

"That sounds good," Harry said. "So your mum knows Moody, then?"

"Yeah, they worked together sometimes before he retired," Cho said. "She was telling me you were the only one in the whole school who figured out Auror Tonks was the third imposter, you know." Cho sounded slightly disgruntled, but mostly admiring.

"Well, I had an unfair advantage, she was at our house half the summer," Harry said. He wondered if Cho and her mother had also known Emmeline Vance, but did not think it sensitive to ask. They discussed their first week of term, including Professor Snape's bizarre behavior, the horrible load of O.W.L. classwork, and Cho's frustration with her own new N.E.W.T. classes, which had begun to demand nonverbal casting nearly universally. 

They strolled around the castle once, then took seats on the near side of the lake, where a number of other students were also enjoying the autumn sunshine. The conversation moved on to when Dueling Club would resume and whether it would be very different with Moody assisting Flitwick instead of Sirius, and what they were going to do with their holiday in December if Bellatrix Lestrange was either caught or spotted outside the country by then and they were allowed to go places again. 

Cho was just telling Harry about a magical park in London that had ice skating during the winter when he checked his watch and realized that it was past noon, and if he wanted to be able to eat lunch and get his broom before practice he had better hurry; she grinned and said "Oh, no, you caught my sabotage!" as they returned to the castle doors.

Ron's first practice was neither great nor terrible. He seemed flustered by the attention at first, missing several easy saves and getting more and more flustered by each one. Angelina held a time out for a break and then had Ron work with her one on one while the others flew drills, and when they reconvened his performance had improved a good bit; Harry supposed it would just take time.

By the time they went to put their brooms away after practice, Ron's nerves over Quidditch seemed to have faded; in their stead he was realizing just how behind he was on homework. Harry had quite a bit left to do himself, despite feeling as though he had done nothing but homework all week, so they found Hermione in the common room and trooped down to the library. The table closest to Cassie's portrait was empty - the study section near the Restricted section was almost never full - so they were able to claim it.

"It's nice to see you all, again," Cassiopeia said as they sat down. "How is your term going so far?"

"Horrible," Ron said, fishing out his Transfiguration textbook grumpily. "You'd think we were taking O.W.L.s _tomorrow_."

"Honestly, Ron," Hermione hissed, although quietly in deference to the library. "They're important--"

"Cassie?" Harry said, thinking of something as he looked over the bronze plaque. "Can I ask something?"

"Of course, with reference to our public location."

"When he hung the portrait last week, Sirius seemed confused by your plaque. Is something wrong with it?"

"I can't actually see it from here. What does it say?" Cassie asked.

"Lady Cassiopeia Black, A Renowned Scholar of the House of Black, Born 1910," Hermione read, apparently having been listening.

"Ah," Cassie said. "It would probably be the title, then." She hesitated. 

"It's not accorded to all the women of the house, is it?" Hermione asked, frowning. Harry supposed that she had either read a guide to titles in the Wizarding world at some point, or had asked over the summer when they discussed adopting her.

He needed to find a time to ask her about whether she had made up her mind about that - and what to tell Ron.

"No, it is not," Cassiopeia said, and glanced down, studying the rings on her hand. "I mentioned I was divorced to you before. I... neglected to reference my twelve hour second marriage."

"...Twelve hours?" Harry said.

"I didn't think you could get a divorce through that fast?" Hermione said.

"No, you can't. I was widowed." Cassie smiled slightly at the looks on their faces. "I mentioned my uncle to you before. When my brother asked him to allow me to divorce, he declared that he wanted to marry me himself and... required my consent. My brother killed him after the wedding on my behalf - I was rather hysterical at the time. 

"The marriage was technically long enough to convey his wife's title on me, and as I never formally remarried I retained it. However, I did not discuss either of my marriages after, and I don't believe Sirius's father knew I was technically his step-grandmother, let alone Sirius."

Harry attempted to wrap his head around this.

"Is it _legal_ to marry your uncle in the Wizarding world?" Hermione asked, sounding appalled.

"Formally, no, but few will argue the rich and powerful doing it anyway," Cassiopeia said dryly. "I imagine anyone trying it now would get a bit more resistance, however." She paused, and must have realized how shaken they all were, because she went on more gently, "There's a reason I don't discuss much of my life. It only upsets others. All of it is long past and all involved are now dead; no more suffering can be inflicted.

"Tell me about the homework assignments you're working on, now."

They returned to Gryffindor tower at curfew, but no sooner had they settled in chairs, Crookshanks joining Hermione in hers, than they were interrupted by a knocking at the closest window. A screech owl was fluttering outside, looking at Ron.

"Hermes!" Ron said, sounding surprised. "What's Percy writing to me for?" He got up and went to open the window. "That's definitely his writing..."

"Open it," said Hermione eagerly.

Ron began to read the letter, but the further he went, the more his scowl deepened. When he finished, he half-threw the letter down between Harry and Hermione, who leaned in to read:

_Dear Ron,_

_I recently heard it from the Minister himself that you have become a Hogwarts Prefect. I wanted to offer my congratulations, first; I was extremely pleased to hear this, as I must admit I had been afraid that you would take what we might call the "Fred and George" route instead of following in my footsteps. I was ecstatic to hear that you had shouldered real responsibility._

_In addition to my congratulations, I wanted to offer you some advice, which is why I am sending this at night instead of the usual morning post. Hopefully you will be able to read this away from any prying eyes._

_I understand from our parents that you are still spending a lot of time around Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. I wanted to tell you, Ron, that while Harry Potter has always been a favorite of Dumbledore's, you may want to end fraternization with that boy, and his friend as well. I am talking not just about school, but your life after Hogwarts, too. I have nothing against Harry Potter himself, but his godfather is a real troublemaker, and I'm sorry to say that his godson and his godson's friend are coming more and more under his influence._

_Seriously, Ron, you don't want to be implicated in the Blacks' actions. Andromeda Tonks is in the core of a group of nobles in the Wizengamot who are actually seeking to throw a coup and install one of their own in the Minister's seat. I know that the Blacks have historically been quite influential but their power passed a long time ago, and their reactionary politics are exactly the sort of thing that will drag everyone around them down. You could end up in Azkaban, or worse. I know our mother is worried about you herself, as she told you over the summer, that was why I promised I'd write to you as well._

_I know that Hermione Granger is a good friend of yours too, and I was happy to answer her questions over the previous year, but I'm sorry to say that she's been seen in public with Andromeda and Sirius repeatedly and it sounds like, like all too many muggleborn witches and wizards, she's decided to take the first hand up she gets. It may be that you're afraid to severe ties with them - I know that the Blacks can be unbalanced and quite possibly violent, and I don't know how much Sirius Black has taught his godson - but if you have any concerns at all, or they do about their guardians, I urge you to pass them on to me._

_I am quite well positioned to assist you or them, working with the Minister. If you should need help more urgently, I suggest you contact the inspectors that will be arriving at Hogwarts soon; they are sure to be a more responsible bunch. Their leader is a quite delightful woman called Dolores Umbridge, who I actually know from work. I'm sure she would be happy to assist you - and any assistance you can give her in turn would position you very well to work in the Minister's office yourself in a few years!_

_Please think over everything I've said carefully, and congratulations again on becoming Prefect._

_Your brother,  
Percy_

Harry and Hermione looked at each other, then Ron.

"Well," Harry said, "If you want to - er - 'sever ties' with the family, I'm pretty sure Sirius won't get violent."

"Give it back," Ron said, taking the letter. "He is--" He tore it in half, "The world's--" then into quarters, "Biggest," then eighths, " _git._ " Finally, he threw the pieces into the fire.

"Harry," Hermione said slowly, "You know where we've heard the name Dolores Umbridge?"

"Where?" Ron asked.

"From Sirius. He was telling us about that legislation she authored to make it impossible for werewolves to work in most fields, after Remus was exposed."

"And Percy thinks she's _delightful?_ " Ron said, sounding appalled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Liked this? [Find it](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/631704872730968064/the-glass-fortress-chapter-7-fraternization) and me on tumblr!
> 
> The quidditch tryout results are based on what Angelina tells Harry in canon and Harry manages to observe from detention. Fortunately Ron's first practice was not disrupted by Draco in this continuity. Percy's specific concerns have also been affected by the political situation.


	8. Legilimency

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By request, I've drawn and posted a [Black family tree](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/632178502067781632/by-request-of-a-couple-of-readers-on-ao3-heres-a) for this continuity on tumblr. (By the way, if I have any readers using screen readers, what's the best way of making a family tree accessible?) Update 10/20/20: [Here's a version which should be easier to read. ](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/632473515246977024/slashmarks-by-request-of-a-couple-of-readers-on)
> 
> Note on specific pairing, translatable through copy/pasting to [ROT13](https://rot13.com/). (Please read this if you have strong feelings about them; skip if you don't want potential spoilers): V jnag gb or pyrne orsber nalbar vf rvgure qvfnccbvagrq be ubcrshy gung V'z abg n Eba/Urezvbar fuvccre onfrq ba gurve pnaba vagrenpgvbaf naq guvf vf abg tbvat gb jbex bhg orggre guna vg qvq va UOC; V sryg vg jnf gehre gb pnaba gb unir gurz gel, gubhtu.

On Tuesday night, just before eight o'clock, Harry collected his bag and made his way down from Gryffindor to the dungeons. Ron and Hermione had offered to go with him, but as he doubted Snape would not allow them into the classroom he had told them to go ahead and work on their homework instead.

He knocked on Snape's office door and received permission to enter. Then, to his surprise, Snape opened the inner door to his quarters and bade Harry to follow him inside. Snape closed and locked the door behind them, then sat down in one of the arm chairs in the sitting room. 

Harry awkwardly perched on the sofa. He had been in this room only once before, when Snape had originally given him the chest of his mother's belongings last year. Snape's quarters had not appreciably changed, except that the books had been somewhat rearranged and perhaps added to. Harry felt a strong desire to slip into magic sight, certain there were many things he could not see, but he was also sure that Snape would see him doing it and might deem it a convenient means to get Sirius into trouble.

"Well," Snape said, studying him. "I am sure you are wondering why we are in my quarters. There are two reasons. The first is that, while practicing Legilimency on students is certainly illegal, Professor Dumbledore allows it under some circumstances, and teaching you Occlumency could reasonably be excused to the Ministry as a request of your guardian's, given his... position. However, I will now be teaching you Legilimency, an illegal discipline itself, and one which the Headmaster certainly would not permit you to learn."

"So, make sure I practice Occlumency around the headmaster," Harry said.

Snape's eyebrows contracted dubiously, but he said only, "Indeed. The second is that..." He broke off, looking quite as uncomfortable as he had in their first class, before going on, "Obviously our first attempt at private lessons did not go well. We cannot have Narcissa here as assistant; while I understand that Bellatrix taught all of her cousins Occlumency, and Narcissa is unlikely to have considered you learning it remarkable, Legilimency is not quite so common a skill. Furthermore, the reasons why you must learn Legilimency are not to be shared with her. So, as we will need to - work together - more cooperatively than the past, I deemed it best to hold these lessons somewhere with fewer..." He appeared pained, "Negative associations for you."

"Right, sir," Harry said uncertainly. "Er - may I ask a question?"

"Go on," Snape granted.

"When we talked over the summer, you said - it sounded like Legilimency was something I had a natural talent for, and Andromeda said she had it but hadn't spent a lot of time learning what to do with it. But - if Professor Dumbledore wouldn't want me taught, isn't it something you have to learn?"

For a moment Snape appeared annoyed, and Harry thought he would not answer; then he said, "Legilimency is a general name for accessing the minds and memories of others. A certain percentage of the population is capable of it - or some portion of it - naturally with no or limited instruction, and it is fairly common in wealthy pureblood families, perhaps only because Legilimency affords one a natural advantage in _seducing_ ," his lip curled contemptuously, "Wealthy men, and the talent is understood to be hereditary. I was not aware that Andromeda Black is a natural Legilimens, but given that her older sister shares the talent, it is not a great surprise.

"Under normal circumstances, a natural Legilimens will begin to exercise the talent around puberty, in the mid-teens, and at that point will require instruction to stop. This instruction has always been tacitly permitted, and teenagers are not generally arrested or charged with Legilimency use before the age at which they are expected to have learned to refrain. In some cases, children have been known to use the ability much younger; there are various theories as to why this happens, but no explanation is proven.

"In addition to natural Legilimency, there are various spells meant to facilitate access to another's mind, and nearly any witch or wizard with a reasonable amount of power can learn to perform them, and those with a facility for nonverbal and wandless magic can learn to do so almost undetectably. Aptitude for _interpreting_ result varies. All of these methods are proscribed in Britain, although a few may be legally used by law enforcement under certain circumstances, and licensed Occlumency instructors may use them during lessons. For obvious reasons, natural Legilimens are sought out by the Ministry for such positions.

"You, Potter, appear to be a natural Legilimens whose abilities have been subverted by the various bizarre circumstances you seem to compulsively attract. You are at about the age at which your talent would wake, but rather than wandering into the minds of your family or fellow students, you are wandering into the mind of the Dark Lord, who is connected to you by magical ties we are not certain of the nature of. 

"Occlumency may provide a limited amount of protection, at least against the Dark Lord deliberately implanting visions. It will not prevent you from accessing the link yourself, and in any case should the link ever be severed you will need control over your abilities in general. I advise you to practice Occlumency every night before sleep, as Narcissa taught you. In addition I will attempt to teach you how to enter or avoid another's mind consciously, in hopes of allowing you to avoid entering the mind of the Dark Lord by accident."

"Hang on," Harry said, then "Er - may I ask another question?"

Snape was visibly annoyed, but said, "Go on."

"If this is - hereditary - did my parents...?"

There was a long moment before Snape said, "Your mother - Lily - was a natural Legilimens, as am I. She was one of those exceptional child cases I mentioned, and her attempts to teach me to do what she could woke the ability early in me. Child instruction is one of the things that will nearly always do it. My mother's family carried the trait sporadically, and while my mother was not herself capable of using it, she was able to obtain instruction for both of us before we got into serious trouble."

"So I get it from her, like the Parseltongue," Harry said, obscurely relieved.

"Yes. If you are ready...?"

Harry nodded, bracing himself for another surprise attack like his first Occlumency lesson last year, but Snape only rose and went to the bookshelf.

"Occlumency involves relatively little active magic use," he said, not looking at Harry as he skimmed across spines. "Your aim is to reorder your own mind and magic so that it is difficult for another to access. Consequently it is mostly a matter of focus, emotional control, and mental construct. Legilimency is different. Normally, when instructing a natural, I begin with a volunteer - a friend of theirs whose mind they have wandered into - and have them reproduce the experiment reliably, but as it would be inadvisable to have you access the Dark Lord's for the sake of practice..."

"No," Harry said, swallowing and thinking that he never wanted to enter Voldemort's mind again if he could help it. 

"...You are going to have to learn to use your abilities on other people before we can teach you to stop using them. As it is obvious that you are incapable of learning from my explanations--" 

Harry barely restrained the impulse to snap at Snape for this comment.

"--We will see if you are any better with another's. Here," Snape slid a thin journal volume from the shelf, "Is an issue of _Mind Magic_ , a black market journal on the general field. As of the Ministry's restriction of most research to the Department of Mysteries, most significant research journals in Britain are run illegally. Please flip to the second article and read it. I will grade while I wait."

Harry nervously turned to the table of contents. The title, _A Case Study of Offensive Mind Magic in Two Child Legilimens_ , meant little to him, but his breath caught when he saw the author: L. Evans.

"Sir, my mother--"

"Most likely had abilities that closely conform to yours," Snape said, not looking up.

"I thought this journal was illegal?"

"Possessing a copy is illegal for those without certain special permissions," Snape said. "Publishing it is extraordinarily illegal, and the location of the printers is a closely guarded secret. But _having been_ published in such a collection is not as long as there is no proof you actually solicited it, and they publish a large quantity of research which is questionable in some way but does not actually contain confession to illegal activities.

"Traditionally authors of such gray area research are not sought by the authorities, although many use pseudonyms. Those who write articles about, say, the theory of human sacrifice certainly do not use their real names, with the exception of those who are so powerful they have little to fear; the Blacks frequently use their own names or extremely thin pen names for that purpose. In any case, the mix of total falsities, inaccurate first initials and real but misapplied surnames makes it difficult to actually obtain a warrant on the basis of a credited author's name. 

"To give an example, it is accepted fact that many of the Rosiers practice illegal blood magic, but if Draco's great-grandmother Vera Rosier were arrested on the basis of her credit in some journal as B. Rosier - her maiden name is Bones, and she has subtly acknowledged the name is hers in public - she would undoubtedly argue on the stand that it was a spurious identification and the real culprit might be any of her twenty or so living relatives, or a totally unrelated witch making use of the Rosier association with the field. Potter, our time is not unlimited. Read."

Harry started at the abrupt change in topic, then bent to the journal, flipping to page seventeen. He felt a sense of excitement totally out of proportion with reading magical theory while supervised by Snape: his mother had written this article, and she must have been talking about her own abilities and her own childhood. Here was the sort of information almost no one had been willing to share with him about his parents - even if it had been published in a journal of illegal magic...

The text was dense and difficult to get through, although Harry suspected many of the other articles would have been worse. His mother had reviewed existing research on child Legilimens, discussing impenetrably several different books and articles; after the first page, Harry got out parchment and started writing down words to look up later, hoping he could find them in the Hogwarts library even if he couldn't take the journal itself out of Snape's quarters. Finally, she had finished the review and begun to discuss her own experiences as a child. She began by giving a rough timeline of when she had begun to use mind magic on her own, and her companion's subsequent use, following hers closely.

Harry's mother had apparently begun to use magic to view thoughts and memories of other people around the age of ten, and had independently invented compulsions with Legilimency by the age of twelve. (Harry was slightly unnerved by this fact, but the article matter-of-factly commented that she had used them mostly to avoid confrontations she couldn't possibly have won, alluding vaguely to the conflict between Voldemort's supporters and muggleborn students at Hogwarts that Sirius had told them about last year in Defense.)

Eventually, she began to describe her firsthand experiences of using mind magic. Again, Harry had to make note of several terms to look up later. She described experiencing flashes, sudden intrusive emotions or thoughts that were not related to what was happening around her earliest and without effort, until she learned to shut them off; she also had immersive dreams where she saw through others' eyes and later confirmed had been accurate to what happened while she slept. 

The ability to deliberately enter someone else's mind had come about six months later, and her description of using it was frustratingly vague. Harry stared at the sentence _I finally acquired the ability to perceive the boundaries of, and then actually slip into, another's mind in much the same way one may lift a seal without damaging it from paper, about a year before entering Hogwarts,_ and read it several times; he was no wiser than before about how she had done this.

He went on to read the rest of the article. The part where she described compulsions was slightly more useful, if unnerving; she referred in that paragraph to sensing the boundaries of another student's magic and mind and reaching out with her magic, molding it instead of only opening it, which gave him a mental image of what she had meant before. He supposed he might try using the magic sight he had been taught over the summer to identify someone's magic, although he was not remotely certain of how to reach out with his own.

Finally, Snape said, "Enough." He glanced at the clock and went on, "You will return next Tuesday with a volunteer to practice on - Granger or Weasley would be best - someone who will not go running to the Headmaster with this. In the meantime I want twelve inches on the theory of natural Legilimency. I am writing you a pass to the Restricted section; you will need it for this. If anyone should ask, we are concerned that the Dark Lord, who is known to be one of the greatest users of mind magic to ever live, may use his abilities against you and you are studying how to prevent it."

Gratefully, Harry collected the pass and his notes and went. It was late, and the hallways near the dungeons were empty of students except for one or two stragglers heading down to Slytherin. Reading the article with Snape's oversight had been strangely exhausting, and he felt as worn out as though he had just undergone a difficult Quidditch practice.  
He was climbing the last stairs to Gryffindor when pain shot through his scar, and he clapped a hand over his forehead, stomach leaping oddly.

The second week of term was just as packed as the first, but at least the weather was better. Angelina set Quidditch practices to Wednesday night and Saturday afternoon, at least until sunset came too early in the day for weeknight practice. Harry found himself wondering how on earth all four teams were going to manage enough practice time on the weekend later in the season. 

They moved on to vanishing mice in Transfiguration, antivenins in Potions, and porlocks in Care of Magical Creatures. Harry and Ron adjusted to spending more time than usual in the library. Harry sorely missed having Sirius's quarters to work in, and Sirius himself around to give reassurance and answer questions, but they made a habit of sitting under Cassiopeia's portrait in the library, and she often filled in for him on legal subjects.

Hermione's birthday was coming up on the same day as as Harry's second Legilimency lesson. The three of them made plans to get lunch from the kitchens and take it outside on Sunday, assuming the weather stayed pleasant, as they wouldn't have much time together Tuesday. Ron and Hermione had agreed to alternate volunteering to come with him to lessons.

Sunday morning, Harry woke up late, enjoying the idea that he had no particular work to get done immediately. He came down from the boys' dormitories at half past ten, Ron already long gone, and found his friends sitting together in the common room. Ron's arm was wrapped around Hermione, who was sitting with slightly flushed cheeks. 

Harry glanced between them.

"Harry!" Hermione said, slightly high pitched.

"Guess what?" Ron was grinning a little oddly, almost nervously.

"What happened?" Harry asked puzzled.

"I asked Hermione--" Ron said, and stopped.

"We're going out now," Hermione filled in. "He asked me if I would and I said yes - to the first Hogsmeade weekend."

"Oh!" Harry said, startled. "Congratulations! Er, we're still doing lunch together, right? All three of us?"

"Of course," Ron said heartily. "Er - you don't mind?"

"Mind?" Harry said, puzzled. "I mean, if you two break up and stop speaking I'll mind, third year was bad enough."

All three of them winced at the memory of Peter Pettigrew masquerading as Scabbers. "Great!" Ron said hurriedly, flushing, and rapidly dove into his bag for a pack of Exploding Snap cards.

But by Tuesday night, Harry was starting to wish he'd said he did mind.

Sunday had been fine. True, Hermione and Ron were a bit awkward around each other, one minute laughing and bickering as usual and the next oddly formal, as though they had been fighting. But it wasn't bad, and Harry had assumed they were only working things out. 

Monday night, it became apparent that Hermione saw herself as responsible for her boyfriend in a totally different way from her friends; she and Ron had had three separate fights about homework and study schedules by the time Harry got up on Tuesday evening and said, "Well, I'm going downstairs, which of you is coming, then?" loudly, interrupting yet another bickering match about Transfiguration essays.

"Er - I'll come, 'Mione doesn't need to have her head pried into on her birthday," Ron said, looking relieved for an escape route, and hurriedly shoveled his things into his bag.

Snape again let them into his office and then, face gone sour at Ron's presence, his private quarters. Ron gaped around, but fortunately did not say anything. While Snape had been holding his temper remarkably for him for the past two weeks, Harry suspected that any comments about his personal quarters would have risked them being turned into frogs.

"Your essay?" Snape said. Nervously, Harry handed it over and watched Snape skim it. "Acceptable," he said after a long pause. "Which books did you reference?"

" _A Theory of Mind Magic and Natural Legilimency_ ," Harry said. "And, er, _A Complete Glossary of Theoretical Magic Terms_ , the ninth edition - someone was using the tenth." He tried not to feel too stupid as he said this; if Snape had admitted his essay was passing that fast, he had probably written one of his best ever.

"Very well," Snape said. "Do you feel prepared to make an attempt to enter Mr. Weasley's mind?"

"Er - I have some ideas to try, yeah," Harry said uncertainly.

Snape's eyebrows rose. "Elaborate."

"I - I read through the descriptions of using Legilimency," Harry said uncertainly. "But they mostly weren't very - specific - and I've had the dreams my mother talked about in her article but that's all, sir. But - she talked about viewing someone's magic and reaching hers towards it when she talked about compulsions, and in _Natural Legilimency_ there's the account by the anonymous Legilimens the author called Athena, where she compares it to focusing for a Summoning Charm and then trying to reach for the magic of the person she's trying to read, so I thought that I'd... combine the two."

"Acceptable," Snape said again, somewhat snidely. "I will monitor and ensure that no damage is done to Mr. Weasley, and you may begin."

"Damage?" Harry said, alarmed. Ron was pale in the shadowy light of Snape's quarters.

"You are attempting to use magic to access his mind. Some risk of damage is inevitable with an unskilled Legilimens. The risk is not excessive, and I will be here to counter it," Snape added. 

Harry thought he was trying to be reassuring, merely extremely bad at it. "Right," he said nervously. "Ron?"

"Go ahead," Ron said, swallowing.

Harry met his eyes - eye contact was supposed to make this easier - and let his focus slip from the room to the magic within it. He could tell that there were bright spots scattered around Snape's quarters, but he forced himself to focus on the kaleidoscope of colors and shapes that made up Ron.

Unfortunately he had no idea how to proceed once he had found them. The magic might as well have been printed in a book for all the idea Harry had of how to interact with it. The urge to poke with his finger at the location where the colors trailed off into shadow rose, and Harry pushed it back.

Like a Summoning Charm, the book had said. Harry thought of raising his wand to call a feather to him, and then focused it on Ron's magic, imagining pulling it toward him--

He wasn't sure what happened next. The magic seemed to distort and ripple. Ron yelped in pain, and Harry rapidly let go; Snape said something and he heard Ron gasp, and lost his view of magic.

"Are you okay?" he said quickly, trying to refocus his eyes.

"Fine," Ron said rapidly. "Fine."

"So, er." Harry looked at Snape. "Didn't work, then?"

Snape rubbed his temples. "No, it did not. Perhaps an example will assist you. I am going to enter Mr. Weasley's mind; Mr. Potter, please watch so that you can attempt to reproduce this."

They went back and forth several times, but Harry had no success, and after his first attempt led to hurting Ron he was reluctant to experiment with his whole heart. Snape grew exasperated and dismissed them after an hour had passed, telling Harry to write another twelve inches on theory, this time focusing on _achieving connection_.

By then both Harry and Ron were exhausted. Harry had a pounding migraine and Ron was looking distinctly queasy. Harry apologized several times on their way up to the tower, then ducked back to get butterbeer from the kitchen for Ron; he felt a more substantive apology was owed.

Ron did not seem to bear any lasting grudge over the abortive lesson, and Hermione fussed over him Wednesday night in a demonstrative way that pleased him, although it also made Harry slightly uncomfortable. He and Cho might kiss in front of other people but they were not prone to the sort of displays Ron engaged in with Lavender and now, apparently, Hermione.

Wednesday morning, happily, they were all distracted by notices for sign ups for Dueling Club, which this year would be held on Thursday nights. The first meeting would be a week from tomorrow. In addition, Harry received a note from Colin Creevey on his way to Transfiguration, telling him that Dumbledore wanted him to come to his office at eight o'clock on Monday night. 

Harry thanked Colin, but he couldn't help sighing when he read the note. In addition to his increasingly burdensome schedule, he was not looking forward to being in private with Dumbledore. Last term, their lessons had ended on an awkward note, and the summer had not given Harry any chance to address the growing rift between him and the Headmaster. He was not at all sure how the conversation would go, and he was not particularly looking forward to finding out.

At breakfast Thursday morning, he was discussing whether they were allowed to go see Hagrid under the new security restrictions with Ron and Hermione, and whether it would be better to ask permission from McGonagall in advance, when a large barn owl with a pure white face fluttered down from the post and landed on the back of Hermione's chair.

"Arke!" Hermione said, sounding surprised, and went to untie the scroll from the owl's leg. 

Harry spotted the Black crest and frowned. "He didn't use Rex?"

"Arke's the owl Andromeda got for Wizengamot business, it's probably from her," Hermione said, then lowering her voice, "It's under an encryption spell, we'll have to read it later - Andromeda put a note outside it saying I should share it with you two."

This was somewhat of a problem, as the three of them didn't have a free period together all day. At least Dueling Club wasn't starting until next week; so when they had come from Defense, slightly exhausted by the review of basic combat spells Moody had put them through, they pulled three chairs together in the common room. Hermione pressed two of her fingers to the parchment and whispered, " _Prodere_ "; the whole paper flashed green, and then words began to appear in Andromeda's loopy script. 

"It's keyed to me," Hermione said. "Sirius said he showed you the spell too, right, Harry?"

"Yeah, before we came back," Harry said, leaning over her shoulder.

_Dear Hermione and Harry (and my regards to Mr. Ron Weasley as well),_

_This is Andromeda, as I'm sure you've guessed, although Sirius is reading over my shoulder & is sure to interject at some point. I hope your first two weeks of term have gone well, and O.W.L.s are not proving too much of a shock to your system. If you find yourself in need of any advice on that front, we await you as always._

_Now that you've settled in a bit, I have marching orders from the Head of the House (that blotch is from Sirius elbowing me; he is depraved and violent, and I am not siphoning it up so that you may see the evidence). Hermione, first, I hope you've considered our offer further; please let us know when you make up your mind. I shall proceed as though you had accepted, as I did when working with you over the summer._

_I am sure you are anxious to hear about the state of Amelia Bones's political campaign. You may recall that the Wizengamot must vote with a majority of thirty of fifty to remove a sitting Minister, and the replacement must be elected by a majority of at least five of seven Department Heads. (Six of eight if the Minister is voting, eg. if the Minister should retire voluntarily and vote on the replacement.)_

_Harry and Ron, if you aren't aware, there are twenty-two hereditary seats on the Wizengamot and twenty-eight filled by appointment at the moment. Of those seats sixteen of the hereditary ones are, we believe, secure to vote against Fudge. Four of the appointed ones are nominated by MLE and therefore nominatively under Amelia's control; consequently we need a minimum of ten more seats to remove Fudge, and would be more secure with twelve to fourteen before the vote is called._

_Amelia is currently conducting negotiations with Dumbledore, who in addition to his own appointed seat as Chair may bring several more with him if they can reach terms. He is no fan of Fudge's policies, particularly given the upcoming inspections (more in a minute), but he is rather leery of Amelia's priorities; he never did like the aristocracy's power. (Sensible man.)_

_I think you both heard us discuss Fudge's manipulation of the Wizengamot over the summer. To review, normally all vacancies beyond the traditional ten Ministry appointments would be filled permanently by the Wizengamot raising a family. In the late seventies, this practice ceased; it became obvious that Voldemort's supporters were massacring Houses who opposed him and using blackmail, bribery and the Imperius curse to fill those seats with families loyal to him. At that point the Minister at the time used emergency powers to freeze the raising of new families; empty Wizengamot Houses were subsequently administered directly by the Ministry, and their seats filled by appointment._

_The intention was to raise new seats when the security threat had passed. However, after the war it was very difficult to determine who had been acting under their own power, and the matter was delayed until Fudge realized it was more useful to him to refuse indefinitely. He does not directly appoint all twenty-eight seats, but he retains the ability to fire any Ministry employee, so in some ways he might as well; any ordinary legislation he really wants passed, he can force through with his twenty-eight seat majority, and there are usually a couple of nobles willing to assist him in matters requiring thirty votes._

_Once he's stripped of his powers, he can't do that. But we have to succeed immediately to stop him; any unsuccessful vote will get the appointees who supported it fired and completely destroy their careers. You see the trouble._

_On the other hand, this state of affairs has annoyed all of the noble houses deeply, and even those who would happily AK me for marrying Ted and spit on my corpse will listen to me convey Madam Bones's promise to begin filling those appointments permanently. We currently endeavor to persuade the uncommitted that they want to support Madam Bones's political ambitions, and to find means of approaching the appointees. Some of them have their own political agendas or personal ambitions; with others, it's a matter of approaching the Department Head or their familial House, or their patrons'._

_As for the Department Heads, a minor difficulty has been presented by circumstances. With Crouch dead, and Bagman fled his gambling debts, two of those positions are unfilled. A majority of at least four of the remaining heads must approve any new appointment - but the current heads are divided. They are Madam Bones herself; Madam Elfwyn Abbott, of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes; Mr. Coeus Mulciber, of Magical Creatures; Mr. Emil Macmillan, of Magical Transportation; and Mistress Antandre Nott Selwyn, of Mysteries, plus the Minister himself as long as he sits. Madam Abbott and Mr. Macmillan are liberal-progressive block; Mr. Mulciber and Mrs. Nott Selwyn are radical-conservative (also referred to as followers of Voldemort); Madam Bones is liberal-traditional, while Mr. Fudge is traditional-conservative._

_A majority of four has been impossible to obtain in replacing either Crouch or Bagman, in part because Mr. Fudge has been deliberately voting with the minority group whenever one is proposed, seeing that his end is near. Efforts to negotiate with either Mr. Mulciber or Mrs. Nott Selwyn have so far been difficult to get off the ground; so while we are quite close to being able to unseat Fudge, we have no guarantee of who would replace him, or if an indefinite stalemate might result. If the Minister is removed but no replacement can be agreed upon, the former minister remains in the post provisionally with restricted powers, which in some ways might be more helpful to Voldemort than even Fudge's current state._

_I'll let you know about further negotiations as they occur. I have a couple of requests to make of you now, especially Harry & Hermione. There's a seventh year boy in Slytherin, Adrian Pucey, who came of age last year and rescued his seat from the Ministry's guardianship and administration; his parents were murdered by Voldemort himself. If you can approach him and find out what his political ideas are - if any - I would be obliged; it's difficult to get a sense of where to begin with such an unknown. He very likely is in a difficult spot himself vis a vis allies, as his mother's House was also wiped out in the war. The Puceys are traditionally a Dark House, like the Blacks, but as you can probably ascertain they opposed Voldemort in the seventies._

_In addition to this I'd like you to keep us updated on any odd interactions you have with other students, particularly those from Wizengamot families, and provide you with a warning. Marriage alliances are a traditional means of securing allies, particularly for a house that has found itself rather lacking in ties. In addition to Harry's status as Sirius's ward, Hermione's association with our house is starting to get out, and you may find yourself - okay, I'm going to give Sirius the quill, he's fussing. (Do you need to go walkies, Padfoot? He just elbowed me again.)_

Andromeda's handwriting broke off here, and was replaced with Sirius's messier scrawl.

_Ignore my cousin, she's a classic example of how even virtuous & noble Slytherins are also complete arseholes._

_Harry, Hermione, like she said, you're both likely to be chatted up by teenagers from Wizengamot houses - Harry a bit less than Hermione, as he's already seeing someone of equal rank. The first thing I want to do is promise you that I am not going to engage you to anyone, Harry. ( & Hermione too if you accept my formal legal authority.) My cousins and I were nearly all engaged as young teenagers and it did not do us any favors politically or personally. _

_Furthermore I view it as short sighted. A push for a bit of legislation lasts months, a year or two at worst; a marriage ideally lasts several decades at least and is a headache to undo in the shorter term. Getting married to get a vote through is putting things backwards._

_I said most of this to Harry last year, and I'm sure you're wondering why I'm saying it again now. Well, Hermione might start receiving gifts along with chatting up, and Harry's going to be way more interesting as I get involved in politics. Hermione, if you get any gifts that seem excessive, they probably are. I'll give Andromeda the quill back here, this is more her sort of etiquette than mine._

Andromeda continued:

_If you think you're getting offered something you shouldn't take, Hermione, what you do is put your chin up, step back or close his hand over it instead of taking it, and say some variation on "You're kind, but I couldn't possibly accept." If they push it they're certainly trying to get one over and they won't be surprised you keep refusing. If you really must you can blame Sirius - "I must consult with Mr. Black" - but this will prime everyone to treat you like our client if you resort to it._

_Anyway, in addition to all of that I wanted to say something about the inspections coming up. We hear Dumbledore announced it to you all at the start of term, but to reiterate, Ministry inspectors will be arriving at school next week (apparently it should be Monday, unless Fudge is playing games again) and sitting in on classes, taking notes on student behavior, etc._

_Supposedly this is to determine the appropriate level of funding necessary now that the student population is rising again. In fact Fudge wants an excuse to interfere with Hogwarts and is looking for anything he can use to get Dumbledore removed, pass legislation giving the Ministry more direct control over the school, fire teachers and replace them with his agents, etc._

_He wasn't able to achieve total control of the inspectors. Their leader is his woman through and through, a lovely woman by the name of Dolores Umbridge whom you should not antagonize or even consider trusting. Madam Griselda Marchbanks, who heads the Wizarding Examinations Authority, will be there as well and is generally loyal to Dumbledore. We haven't been able to find out the other names yet._

_This brings me to our second request: we'd like an account of the other inspectors and their behavior - the sort of questions they're asking, who they're interested in in particular, that sort of thing. I doubt I need to tell you to behave as well as you can and give the inspectors the best impression possible. We have our differences with Dumbledore and we understand if you, especially Harry, feel rather mixed about him at the moment but if he's replaced it will be with Fudge's stooge._

_In conclusion, we hope your term is going well, please write._

_Affectionately,  
Andromeda Black  
&  
Sirius Black_

The three of them sat up and exchanged glances, a bit uncertainly. Harry felt that he was on new and uncertain ground; while he had been aware of the Blacks' political involvement, and that he would inevitably have something to do with it, it was really much more Hermione's sort of thing.

"What offer was he talking about?" Ron said to Hermione, and Harry tried not to wince.

"Oh, er..." Hermione hesitated. "It's just something we were talking about over the summer - I was working with Andromeda in the Wizengamot, because I'm interested in politics and she needed help with all of the paperwork..."

"So it's just what you said before?" Ron asked, looking subtly relieved. "They might hire you after school, and then you'd be a Black client?"

Harry was not going to say anything on Hermione's behalf, but he didn't think hiding this from Ron now that he'd asked directly was a good idea. Wishing he had already mastered Legilimency, he tried to beam this into Hermione's skull with his eyes.

Hermione hesitated. "Well," she said. "That's really why, but it's not quite all - er, that is. They offered over the summer to adopt me," she said quickly and quietly. "I haven't accepted or anything, I said I'd think about it."

"Oh," Ron said, wide eyed. "I - oh." He lapsed into silence.

For once, Harry felt that he knew more or less what was going on when it came to pureblood Wizarding culture here, having had a whole summer to overhear conversations about politics and see how people reacted whenever the Blacks arrived somewhere. 

Ron had fancied Hermione for years, even if he and Hermione were the last to admit it, but the chances that Ron would be able to afford to marry a Black woman were very slim. Of course, Sirius wasn't going to pick Hermione's husband for her, or demand a certain amount of income, even if he did adopt her; and he had more or less said this in the letter. But Ron probably wouldn't be thinking in those optimistic terms at the moment.

"You don't mind, do you?" Hermione asked anxiously.

"No, of course not," Ron said rapidly. "Let me know what you - decide, yeah?" And he dropped the letter in Harry's lap, grabbed his bag, and rushed out of the common room, with only a vague mutter about Fred and George to excuse himself.

"Hermione?" Harry said nervously.

"He'll just - need some time!" Hermione said quickly. "I don't mind, it's a lot to think about." Then she burst into tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Liked this? [Find it](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/632326250701144064/the-glass-fortress-chapter-7-legilimency), and me, on tumblr!


	9. The Headmaster of Hogwarts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Certain pieces of dialogue and description in this chapter are from OotP chapters eight and eleven.

Calming Hermione down took some time, particularly as she insisted that she wasn't upset and didn't know why she was crying. Harry finally gave up on getting her to talk about Ron and distracted her with the rest of the contents of the letter instead, wondering aloud what the best approach to talking to Adrian Pucey would be. Harry had been playing opposite Pucey since his first year, and knew what he looked like, and on the bright side Pucey had never deliberately fouled him or been rude to him, but Harry knew absolutely nothing else about him.

Hermione gratefully seized upon this change of subject, wiping her eyes with her sleeve, and began to speculate about Pucey's extracurriculars. Finding out if he participated in any besides Quidditch and attending a meeting was probably the least suspicious means possible of striking up a conversation with a seventh year from another house. In no time at all Hermione was drawing up a list of the most widely attended clubs and trying to recall people they knew who would be able to tell them if Pucey was a participant, and were also unlikely to spread it around that they had asked.

Ron came back to the common room eventually. He nervously drew his chair up to join the conversation without commenting on his previous exit or Hermione's reddened eyes. Harry hoped that this would be the end of any actual argument, even if they would have to come to some kind of understanding about the situation still.

In Arithmancy the next morning, however, Hermione was distracted and unhappy, and had to actually ask Draco and Harry what the class activity was when Daphne asked her to explain a point again. Draco shot Harry an incredulous look around Hermione's hair, and waited until Hermione went up to talk to Professor Vector about the advanced assignment she was doing to ask, "What happened?"

Harry hesitated. "You know she and Ron are dating, right?"

"What did Weasley do?" Draco scowled.

"He didn't _do_ anything," Harry said, fighting a sigh. "Well - not really. Andromeda wrote Hermione and I a letter Thursday--"

"We all saw," Draco said. "Clever of her, sending it to Hermione with the official crest, it sends a message without really having to commit to anything. By the time they get around to declaring her heir everyone will have spent their shock already." He appeared to notice the look on Harry's face at the idea that Hermione had told Draco before Ron, because he said, "I don't know anything for sure, I assume that's what's still a secret, but the implications are fairly clear. Weasley's figured it out and he's upset?"

"He wants to marry her," Harry said carefully, "And he's afraid he won't be able to, I think, but he hasn't admitted that's he problem, so he can't just say that's why he's upset."

Draco studied his quill with a disapproving expression. "Well, I can see why he wants her, but it's not like they're remotely suited. I said so last year."

"Just shut up, she's coming back," Harry said, irritated with Draco, in part because he didn't really have an answer. Fortunately, Hermione's arrival forestalled any reply.

Harry distracted Ron during their free period while Hermione was in Ancient Runes by asking him about his Divination research. Ron had come up with an idea for a practical assignment he could do for his October essay and was finalizing the details before asking Professor McGonagall; it involved the methods used to surveil a room through mirrors. 

Harry then enlisted Ron's help in describing his problems with Legilimency in a letter to Andromeda. He tacked on a promise at the end that they were looking into Pucey and would let her know about him and the inspectors soon. Although he had been trying to shake it from his mind, he added a quick question about his scar hurting again, with no vision this time; then they went up to the Owlery to send the letter at the beginning of lunch.

Ron and Hermione had either come to an understanding or mutually decided to pretend nothing had happened by the weekend, to Harry's relief. He went on another Saturday morning picnic and walk with Cho and made plans to fly over the lake the next Saturday morning, since the Quidditch pitch was booked out with practices that day and the next. When Harry came back his friends were seated in the courtyard, Hermione's head in Ron's lap, apparently relaxed together again.

Andromeda's reply arrived on Sunday, carried by Arke with the assurance that Hedwig would return when she had had a few more days' rest. Andromeda began with a disclaimer that she wasn't sure how much help she would be, since every natural Legilimens she knew conceived of using their abilities differently - something that it would have helped immensely to know in the first place from Snape, Harry thought. 

She also told him that someone's mind generally wasn't reachable via the same means as their magic, and that focusing on eye contact would almost certainly make it easier, as would strong emotions in the subject. Much like the process of gradually attuning to magic, which generally began with artifacts that broadcast very strong effects, it would be easier to pinpoint a strong reaction and refine attention to it than to perceive nuances at first. 

Andromeda advised him that with a cooperative practice partner you could provoke a reaction by discussing something that they felt strongly about, or having them view images or read texts that would provoke emotions. Hermione would be coming with him Tuesday according to their previous arrangement, so Harry thought he might try talking to her about her Arithmancy project, or if positive emotions failed, politics.

_It's also possible that you won't be able to do anything until the link is broken; it will almost certainly take a lot of effort and power to see outside it if that's where your abilities are naturally directed, she had added. I would ask Snape to teach you the Legilimens Charm if you're still unsuccessful in a few lessons; that may be enough to show you the pathway out for your natural abilities._

She had finished by saying that she would mention Harry's scar hurting to Sirius; it was worrisome, but it was likely that this would continue as Voldemort gained strength. 

"Why couldn't Snape have told me even half of that?" Harry muttered, folding the letter to put it back in his bag.

"Because he's a git," Ron surmised, and reached for the kippers. Harry laughed.

Sunday night, Hermione excused herself, saying something about Professor Sinistra having another holiday for Jewish students in her quarters. She glanced hopefully at Ron as she said this, but Ron was currently absorbed in an argument with Dean about the relative interestingness of football versus Quidditch and completely oblivious. Harry was just trying to decide whether to interrupt him when Hermione sighed loudly, dramatically heaved Crookshanks out of her lap, and left.

On Monday, Harry rose with a certain amount of trepidation. The inspectors would be arriving today, and he wasn't sure what to expect, or what sort of information Andromeda would find the most useful. Furthermore, he had never been very good at staying out of trouble at times when it mattered. He dressed nervously and tried hard, though not particularly successfully, to flatten his hair before going downstairs. Ron was similarly neater than usual, and when they met Hermione in the common room they saw that she had plaited her hair and wound it in a bun at the back of her head to contain it and, unusually, scrubbed her fingers entirely free of ink stains.

When they made their way into the Great Hall, they saw that five new chairs had been added at the ends of the staff table, containing two witches and three wizards. Harry's eye was drawn almost involuntarily to a woman who bore a startling resemblance to a toad. She was wearing a pink bow in her hair, like something out of a rather sickening children's illustration, and had put on a pink cardigan over her robes, though the Great Hall was not cold.

"That's Umbridge," Hermione whispered to Harry and Ron. "I haven't met her or anything, but she's got an appointed seat on the Wizengamot, I saw her a couple of times over the summer when I went with Andromeda." Hermione was also able to identify Madam Griselda Marchbanks, an ancient and very short witch. Ron said that one of the wizards was John Burbage, who worked for the Ministry's Public Information Services and knew his father, but the other two wizards were unknown.

As usual in the morning, the hall was somewhat sparsely populated. Students filtered in and out gradually during breakfast, and food was available for at least four hours. Consequently, no announcement could be made now, but Harry suspected that there would be one at dinner.

"Maybe they'll inspect Binns and he'll be sacked," Ron remarked, stuffing several fried eggs into his mouth at once. Hermione looked physically pained, although Harry couldn't be sure if this was because of her boyfriend's manners or the reminder of Professor Binns's dubious teaching abilities.

There was no inspector in their first class, however, nor their second, although Snape was curt and short-tempered, and visibly stopped himself from snarling at students several times. At lunch they asked around; Harry went to the Ravenclaw table to talk to Cho and her friends and found out that Madam Umbridge had been in their N.E.W.T. Transfiguration class.

"She kept trying to interrupt McGonagall, and McGonagall finally snapped at her that she didn't usually allow people to talk when she was," Cho said, giggling. "Umbridge looked like she'd swallowed one of McGonagall's mice."

When they filed into Defense that afternoon, they discovered that the wizard Ron had recognized, John Burbage, was sitting in the back of the classroom with a clipboard. 

Moody's classes were usually just as attentive as Sirius or Remus's had been, but a spate of whispers broke out when they spotted the visitor. Moody himself arrived a minute before the bell, clunking up the aisle between the desks to the table at the front. "John Burbage, is it?" he growled at the man, who nodded, looking slightly discomfited to have all of Moody's attention on him at once. "I remember seeing you in the Ministry every now and then... Well, you're welcome to have a look. Mind you don't sneak up behind me or get in the way once we get our wands out."

This did not make Mr. Burbage look any more comfortable.

Moody turned back to the class itself and announced that they'd done a pretty good job last week reviewing Disarming, Shield and basic offensive spellwork, but they would need to demonstrate some more advanced magic on their O.W.L.s, and besides most Dark wizards and witches could get through a simple _Protego_. They had a short discussion of more complicated and powerful Shield Charms, and - new to Harry - spells that modified a shield once it had been cast; then Moody had them all practice the movement and incantation of _Duri_ , which would reinforce a shield.

"Now, obviously you should be putting as much power as you can into a Shield Charm anyway," Moody said. "So what's the point of casting a second spell that just does the same thing? Anyone? Mr. Potter?"

"Er, more than one person could cast _Duri_ on the same shield, couldn't they?" Harry said. Mr. Burbage had bent to begin scribbling as soon as Moody called on him; he tried to ignore this, although he felt very conspicuous. "So you could use more power together than any one of you could alone."

"Good," Moody growled. "Take five points. Anyone else? Any other reasons?"

They came up with several other advantages: a Shield Charm reinforced by multiple people would last even if the original caster passed out, became exhausted or distracted, or died; if one caster had trouble with an aspect of the spell, for instance keeping the shield impenetrable to physical objects, the reinforcer could cover for it; and if you got a shield up that started to fail because you hadn't been concentrating, strengthening it could compensate without exposing you while you dropped your shield to recast. At the end of the discussion, Moody told them to work in groups and cast shields, first individually and then together, and keep track of how many Stunners it took to hammer them down. Then he walked around correcting them. 

At the same time, Mr. Burbage circled the class, clipboard in hand, and asked questions of the students. He didn't approach Harry, Ron and Hermione, but they overheard him asking Lavender if Professor Moody had ever frightened them or made them feel their physical safety was threatened in class. To Harry's relief, Lavender emphatically denied this.

The class went down to dinner together, where the whole school had turned up early for once. The Great Hall was a mass of noise that seemed to hit Harry like a physical wall coming in. It seemed that everyone else also anticipated an announcement at dinner. Harry, Ron and Hermione found seats on the edge of the Gryffindor table nearest the staff table - often a comparatively empty side - and waited for food to appear.

Sure enough, Professor Dumbledore stood when the rest of the staff had collected. The Great Hall quieted remarkably quickly.

"Thank you, everyone," Dumbledore said. "I regret that I must delay your feeding and watering by just a few moments. As I am sure many of you have noted, the Ministry's inspectors have arrived. I bid you to welcome Madam Dolores Umbridge, Madam Griselda Marchbanks, Mr. John Burbage, Mr. Blaise Zabini--"

Harry gave a startled look to the Slytherin table. Blaise Zabini was slouched in his chair for once, ostentatiously paying no particular attention to the man Dumbledore had indicated at the head table. The adult Blaise Zabini had light brown skin and a face that did not particularly resemble the younger one.

"--and Mr. Patrick Turpin," Dumbledore went on as though he had not heard the whispering from Slytherin, indicating an older wizard, not quite as ancient as Madam Marchbanks. "Some of you may recall Madam Marchbanks from your O.W.L. examinations. I know that you will all show the utmost courtesy and respect to our guests. I must request your cooperation as long as they are present here, for--"

" _Hem, hem._ " The toad-like Madam Umbridge had cleared her throat for attention. 

Harry felt indignant, disagreement with Dumbledore aside, that she had interrupted them. Several of the professors scowled, and a murmur rose up from the students.

Dumbledore only smiled amiably and inclined his head to her. "Yes, Madam Umbridge?" He sat down and looked alertly at her, as though he wanted nothing more than to listen.

"Thank you, Headmaster, for those kind words of welcome," she said in a high-pitched, breathy voice. "I am so pleased to be back at Hogwarts, and to see all of these happy faces before me..."

Harry glanced around. No one looked terribly happy, though he saw many students looking taken aback to be addressed as though they were small children.

"I am sure we will get along wonderfully," Umbridge went on; then she straightened subtly, and some of the simper left her. "The Ministry of Magic has always valued the education of young wizards and witches very highly. Your rare gifts must be perfected and polished, lest they perish as nothing; and that treasury of knowledge which tradition has brought us must be maintained by our teachers..."

Umbridge's voice went from grating to droning rapidly, and Harry struggled to follow the speech as she continued. Around him, students who were not accustomed to having their dinner interrupted with lengthy announcements begin to chat, took out homework assignments or magazines, or fiddled with the empty plates in front of them. Umbridge seemed oblivious.

Recalling Andromeda's letter, Harry couldn't help but feel something ominous in Umbridge's words. If this was meant to cover for interference at Hogwarts, Fudge had got entirely the wrong woman as his speaker. In fact even the inspectors were not united; Mr. Burbage was listening attentively but unenthusiastically, while Madam Marchbanks scowled and Mr. Zabini examined his fingernails with a dramatic flair that put Harry distinctively in mind of his younger relative. 

Hermione was listening, although her scowl was if anything deeper than Madam Marchbanks's. Harry caught her eye just as Umbridge suddenly sat; he had missed the end of the speech. In the scattered applause - most of the students had been caught quite by surprise, not having been listening - Hermione grimaced and hissed "Interference!" at him and Ron across the table.

"Thank you very much for your words," Professor Dumbledore said calmly. "As I was saying, I request all of your cooperation with our inspectors, for their evaluations will help determine the staff and curriculum for the coming spring. Now, we have kept you from your dinner long enough," he said, and the golden plates were abruptly brimming with food.

Gratefully, Harry reached for a plate of chicken; but he could not stifle a distinct feeling of unease.

The common room that night buzzed with gossip about the inspectors. The Ministry's desire to interfere at Hogwarts was a subject of great interest; many students had parents or relatives who worked there and had warned them, and Umbridge's speech had tipped others off. 

What exactly the Ministry wanted to do and whether they were going to be successful, and whether it was a good thing or not if they were, was debated endlessly by nearly everyone. Harry heard several wild rumors, including that Professor Dumbledore was going to be arrested and sent to Azkaban for experiments with illegal magic by the end of the month; that all practical Defense coursework would be banned below fifth year; and that the entire staff was going to be fired because of the last ten years' O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. results being abysmal. A certain amount of more plausible gossip also spread: it seemed quite likely that the Ministry was unhappy about the political content of last year's Defense class and found Dumbledore an easier target than Sirius, for example, and not at all implausible that they wanted a more pro-Ministry, modern History curriculum that would emphasize Fudge's role in preserving stability post-war.

At ten to eight, Harry gathered up his bag again and set off for Dumbledore's office, wondering if it would be worthwhile to ask Dumbledore his thoughts on the Ministry's actions, and whether he would have time. He had not had any chance to talk to Dumbledore in private for ages, and he wasn't entirely certain of the headmaster's view of the events of last term - the Third Task, Bellatrix Lestrange's escape, or the death of Bartemius Crouch Sr. He supposed that Snape had almost certainly advised Dumbledore about Harry's vision over the summer, but he did not know what the headmaster thought of it, except that Snape had suggested he would object to Harry learning Legilimency. 

Harry vaguely recalled that Dumbledore had said something about research into Tom Riddle's background over the summer when they had last met. He had shown Harry the memories of the young Tom Riddle's gang professing their ignorance as to who had cursed twelve year-old Marina Bobbin. If he came to Dumbledore's office and the Pensieve was set up again as though everything was normal, as though Dumbledore had not been blatantly trying to manipulate him with it last year, Harry might be unable to prevent himself from shouting. 

Well, he thought grimly, the worst Dumbledore could really do was give him detention, and Harry had had detention before...

He gave the password to the stone gargoyle and went up the spiral staircase, heart pounding loudly in his chest. He felt as though he were going to confront a manticore or some new project of Hagrid's, not the Headmaster. He had not been this nervous last year, even after Dumbledore tried to use Legilimency on him - but then, he had not had so long away before...

Finally he was at the top of the stairs. He knocked and opened the door.

Dumbledore was seated at his desk, as usual, but the Pensieve was thankfully not present. Just now his head was down, and what Harry could see of his face was tired and grave, like all of the headmaster's many years had settled upon him.

He looked up, hearing Harry's footsteps, and his face brightened, though not quite to its usual state. "Harry," he said. "Please sit down."

"Professor." Harry crossed the office and sat. Fawkes fluttered from his perch over to perch on his shoulder, and Harry stroked his head, a bit nervously. "Hello, Fawkes."

Dumbledore smiled at this. "Well. How has your term been so far, Harry?"

"Busy," Harry said truthfully. "How's yours, Professor? Er - how is Fudge?"

Dumbledore laughed, to his surprise. "Perhaps not as well as I might have hoped. Cornelius Fudge is not so happy with me as he has been; he wanted very much for me to give an announcement that the situation with Madam Lestrange was under control, and the Ministry was sure to apprehend her at once--"

"But they haven't got any idea where she is!" Harry said indignantly. "Er, sorry, sir."

"Quite alright. You are correct. I told Cornelius that I felt unable to justify giving false reassurances to the public, when alertness is so vital, and we had a disagreement regarding Madam Vance's death, as well. She was a friend of mine, and I was very sorry to see her go."

"I'm sorry, Professor," Harry said, feeling wrong footed. He tried to remember what he had been thinking on the stairs, and what he had wanted to say.

"Thank you, Harry. My condolences to your family as well; I know that your godfather knew Madam Vance as well, even if you had never met." Dumbledore hesitated, then. "About our business, Harry..."

"You have more memories to show me, sir?" Harry said, and did not wait for an answer, for he did not want to give himself time to reconsider. "I wanted to - say something - about that, sir."

"Please," Dumbledore said, watching him closely.

Harry imagined diving for the Snitch, forming the mental construct and the shield, but he felt nothing brushing against it; if Dumbledore was using Legilimency it was too subtle for Harry to detect.

"Look," he said, taking a deep breath. "The memories you showed me - there were reasons for all of them, sir, and I understand that much. But there were also... It seems like a funny coincidence that so many of them showed me the Black family, and Sirius, in ways that upset me. And we both know you used Legilimency on me after I'd learned to detect it at least once, sir. I don't see that there's much use in pretending otherwise."

Dumbledore frowned at him. Harry couldn't read his face at all. "Are you accusing me of something, Harry?"

"Yeah, I am," he said. "I think you were trying to get me and Sirius to fight, sir. And I want to know why, and what you were trying to accomplish, because at this time last year you told me you were sorry you'd sent me to the Dursleys and you didn't know how they treated me... But I don't know how I can believe any of it was true, if you spent the rest of the year trying to get me away from the rest of my family."

They sat in silence for long moments. Dumbledore looked exhausted again, and Harry felt a twinge of guilt, but he pushed it back. He hadn't said anything but the truth. Dumbledore seemed to be gathering his thoughts. Harry hoped he would tell the truth himself, and not only another story meant to calm Harry down.

Finally he said, "I will try to be honest with you, Harry. I am... deeply sorry that I have sown mistrust between us, and I can't blame you for your anger."

Harry nodded, lips pressed together. If this was all Dumbledore had to say...

"I did not intend to return you to the Dursleys," Dumbledore said. "I did not know how they treated you, and I was appalled to find out what little I do know now. I..." He hesitated, studying the objects on his desk as though looking for answers or inspirations. 

"I did not seek to separate you from your godfather, either. I... admit that I was concerned by his reinstatement of Narcissa Black, and that I have mistrusted him recently, for faults that were at least as much mine as his.

"If I selected information about Voldemort that would also reflect on the Blacks - and on the society of which they are a part - then I ask you to forgive me for giving it to you under such pretenses. I was not trying to foster argument between you and Sirius, but I was... concerned... that you be given information about them before joining the family, particularly as Sirius began to reconstitute it. I had believed last summer, you understand, that Sirius likely would let the title lapse and the estates continue to be managed by their residents. The knowledge that he had begun to take up his father's rank came to me as an unpleasant surprise."

Harry hesitated. He didn't understand Wizarding politics well, and he knew it, but... "Sirius has a seat on the Wizengamot, and they're the only part of the government that isn't totally under Fudge's control," he said. "And I know you don't like Fudge."

"It would be extremely hypocritical of me to object to the Wizengamot as a body, as its chair," Dumbledore said with a wry smile. "Yet I disapprove of how nearly all of its ranks are constituted. The use of the Wizengamot seat is a necessary evil, one that I hope may in my life time give way to a more democratic method of selection; the remainder of the Blacks' properties..."

Harry frowned harder. "It's not that I disagree with what you're saying, sir, exactly." He found that he much preferred to look at Fawkes instead of the headmaster at the moment. "It isn't fair that some families have all of this wealth and power over other people just because of their ancestors. But - Sirius just ignoring it didn't fix any of that, did it? It just meant that the people who live on the Black lands didn't know what would happen when he died if he didn't have children, and they had to keep paying rent into the Black account, or to the stewards who were left, but they didn't have any of the stuff Sirius was supposed to do for them - getting bridges and mills fixed or help with crop blight or anything." 

He hadn't been helping with the Black management himself - Sirius had said that there was enough time for him to learn what to do with the much smaller Potter lands when he wasn't taking O.W.L.s - but he had overheard enough and asked enough idle questions to have some idea.

"Sirius is more than capable of setting the rents to a symbolic amount, or of selling the land to its occupants," Dumbledore said, then shook his head. "This is an argument I may take up with him, as I have with others, but it isn't an answer to the question you asked. I was concerned about the influence of the Black family on you - that you would have little other information without any other adults close to you, that you might be upset or even traumatized by what you saw and have no context for it, or that you might be persuaded of the righteousness of the nobility's claim to power." Unusually for Dumbledore, he said this last almost sarcastically, rather than with his usual air of benevolence.

"You could have just _said that to me,_ " Harry said, frustrated. "I'd have listened if you said you were worried about what the Blacks would be like, even if I didn't agree. Or you could have asked me how I was, what it was like being around them, instead of trying to set me up to be afraid of Sirius, or angry with him." He could see Dumbledore was rallying himself to answer this charge, so he went on. "The Defense curse - Sirius said he took the job with the aim of breaking it last year. Did you expect it to kill him? Did you _want_ it to kill him?"

"Harry," Dumbledore said, sounding for the first time frustrated instead of placidly accepting, "The fact that I have been frustrated by your guardian recently hardly means--"

"You _knew_ people had died when he took the job," Harry said, cutting him off furiously. "He said you offered it to him. Quirrell died, Lockhart had all his memories erased and Remus was outed as a werewolf, just in the three years before he took the post. What am I _supposed_ to think, _sir?_ "

The portraits behind Dumbledore's desk were murmuring to each other heatedly, but Harry ignored them, staring fixedly at Fawkes.

"The Defense position," Dumbledore said after a long moment, "Has been a source of constant agony of decision-making for me for thirty years now. You are correct that the risk of accepting the post is immense. Nonetheless it must be filled. 

"The curse jumps to the alternate class if Defense is renamed or reformulated, as long as it is meant to fill the same gap in the curriculum, and when in the past efforts were made to cover aspects of that subject in multiple other classes instead, those teachers began to have accidents as well, over the course of the term, until we resumed our previous arrangement. So the alternative to offering up a teacher as a sacrifice is to leave all aspects of Defense totally untaught. Even if this were palatable to me, the Ministry would certainly not allow it. Both previous teams of Curse-Breakers could find no evidence of a curse, and so the Ministry has long concluded there is only a series of coincidences. If I did not fill the post they would step in to do it instead, and probably dismiss me as Headmaster. 

"In addition to my own selfish desire to keep the position, the Headmaster has a great deal of control over policy at Hogwarts and indeed in the British educational system in general, as all smaller schools tend to follow where Hogwarts leads. Under Professor Dippet, for example, the graduation rate of students with muggle parents - one or two - was under twenty percent; for another, when I abolished the use of corporal punishment at Hogwarts, all but a handful of the smaller schools followed suit within three years. I do not kid myself that no other could do the job properly, but Minister Fudge's pick would not likely share the priorities I hope you do with me.

"Every so often there is a run of relatively good luck with the position, nonfatal or even relatively happy accidents - for example the teacher the year before you began school left to marry after an unplanned pregnancy - and it becomes easier to fill for a time. When I cannot, I find myself forced to resort to favors and pleading. It is never a pleasant task to ask another to risk their life in one's stead. I have taught Defense myself twice in the last thirty years; I did not, of course, die, but I was hospitalized after one year, and after the second had to take a year's leave to recover.

"When I chose to ask Sirius, a part of my reason was that as a Black he was more likely to be able to withstand the curse. He did not want to be immediately separated from you, on his part. We discussed the matter in the interview, and Sirius speculated that he might be able to break it. I was grateful for his willingness to make the attempt. If you do not believe me," and here Dumbledore was sorrowful, "You may ask him to confirm it. I was not trying to get Sirius killed."

On the one hand, Harry wasn't sure he believed this. On the other hand, he wasn't sure what proof he could honestly ask for, when the subject at hand was Dumbledore's intentions. Veritaserum or Legilimency would be unlikely.

Harry took a deep breath. "Why did you use Legilimency on me? Have you been doing it since I started?"

There was another long silence.

"Harry," Dumbledore said, "I regret the necessity of it. Owing to the nature of the prophecy, I could not be certain--"

"You could have asked," Harry said, half rising from his chair. Dumbledore fell silent, watching him. "You could have asked the Dursleys about me, maybe you would have realized they were like! I was eleven, what could that possibly have told you?"

"Tom Riddle--"

"Tom Riddle was a _scared child!_ " Harry shouted. The memories Dumbledore had shown him and the details he had told him meshed with Lucretia's account over the summer, details from Druella's anecdotes with the diary Harry had spoken to second year. He had not even realized he was angry about any of this, but words kept bubbling out, almost without his approval. "He was surrounded by bullying, pureblood bigots, and he had to find a way to impress them, so he did! He might never have turned into what he did if he'd had any other way out--"

"When I met him, he was already an accomplished tormentor of other children, Harry--"

" _Do you think I don't know children are cruel_?" Harry snarled. "I lived with my cousin Dudley for thirteen years! He and his friends made a game of beating me up! I used to use accidental magic so I wouldn't get in trouble for having to go to the hospital, before I knew I could do magic at all!" He had not thought about Dudley in more than a year; most of his actual resentment was aimed at his aunt and uncle, now that Harry Hunting was no longer a game he could be forced to participate in. "He's a sadistic, bullying little creep, but he's only that way because it's how his parents taught him to treat me, and how was he supposed to know anything else? 

"I thought that was what you were trying to show me, when you showed me those memories of the career meetings! You're supposed to be famous for giving people second chances, why didn't Tom Riddle get a _first_ one? Why didn't _I_ get a chance before you decided to go digging around in my _mind?_ "

A long silence reigned. The muttering from the portraits grew louder, but Harry continued to ignore it.

"The way I treated Tom Riddle at school," Dumbledore said finally, quiet-voiced, "Is one of the greatest regrets of my life - both that I made no attempt to guide him, and that I made little effort to protect other students from him. I did nothing but watch, and yes, I should have learned that lesson before meeting you. I watched you as well, and what I saw comforted me - that your greatest wish was love and acceptance; that you treated your friends with respect and care rather than disdain and sadism; that you instinctively championed the weak. 

"You are correct that I did not need to intrude upon your mind to learn these things, and I - perhaps I should not have done so," Dumbledore went on tiredly. "I offer you what apology I can. It is an unfortunate fact that people tend to use the tools available to them, even when they are not well suited, or are far more destructive than necessary. It is for this reason that I discourage study of Dark Arts even when they seem to be justified by a task."

Harry was not remotely sure this was enough, but his first Defense class sprung to mind, where he had had exactly that problem with an illegal detection method.

"I don't know whether I can accept that apology," Harry said, finally. "I'm glad that you know you were wrong to try to drive me and Sirius apart. I see what you're saying about the aristocracy but I need to think before I can tell you what _my_ opinions are, because I don't really know enough to have them yet, sir." He hesitated. "Is that why you wanted me raised in the muggle world? Not just the security concerns, but so that I wouldn't become a - useless aristocrat?" He was really pushing things now, but it couldn't be worse than shouting, he supposed, so he went on, "Because if it is, sir, I see why, but I don't think that was your decision to make, either. If you wanted to have the right to make choices like that for me, you should have raised me yourself instead of foisting me off on someone else."

Dumbledore smiled wanly. "You are, once more, correct. I am afraid to say that the root of most of my flaws is a tendency to fear what I cannot control, and to make what decisions others allow me to. It is for this reason that I turned down the post of Minister."

"Well, I'm glad that you know it. Sir," Harry said, and said, "So. If all that's - over with - what are we going to do now?"

Dumbledore hesitated, then said, "I am sorry for the information I have excluded you from, Harry. If you will allow me some time to think - particularly as we have relatively little time left - I would like some time to organize what I know so that I can tell you in the most effective manner. I understand your frustration with the memories, but I may want you to view several more of them, because I was telling the truth when I said that much of what I know about Voldemort is supposition and I do not want to mislead you if I am wrong."

"Alright, sir," Harry said, figuring that was the best he was going to get. "Is there anything you can tell me now?"

Dumbledore hesitated. "One thing, Harry. I cannot absolutely confirm this, but having had a chance to examine the diary you delivered to me several years ago - I believe that Voldemort has made at least one, and perhaps multiple, Horcruxes. A Horcrux is--"

"I know that already, sir," Harry said. Dumbledore stopped short, staring, and Harry hastened to come up with an explanation. "Sirius's family told him about them. His father knew Voldemort in school, and he thought he'd made one then."

"I see," Dumbledore said, gaze turning from wary, slowly, to thoughtful. "So I see..."

They agreed that they would meet again the following Monday at the same time, which, Harry thought, would allow him to consult with Snape about whether to tell the headmaster about _their_ private lessons. 

Then Harry had to go back to Gryffindor tower and consider what on earth he was going to tell Ron and Hermione.

Hermione was predictably horrified and Ron awed when Harry admitted he had shouted at Dumbledore. "We were talking about - the memories he showed me, why he showed me things that made me upset with Sirius, and him trying to use Legilimency on me," Harry whispered; they were sitting in his and Ron's dorm, on Harry's bed with the curtains drawn and silencing charms up. "And we sort of got side tracked into Dumbledore thinking of me as someone he had to control even when I was eleven, and how he treated Tom Riddle, too, and why he made the decision he did when I was a baby about where to send me. And he - told me about the Horcruxes, that he suspected Voldemort had made more than one. He said he'd talk to me again Monday when he had had time to think about how to tell me everything."

"Are you going to tell him about what Sirius was teaching us?" Ron asked.

"I'm not sure." Harry glanced at Hermione, who was frowning to herself, too. "What's wrong? Mad I shouted?"

"I think he deserves it, actually," Hermione said, looking slightly appalled by her own statement, but added, "I just hope he actually tells you the truth this time! Are you going to forgive him?"

"Depends on what he says Monday, doesn't it?" Harry said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Liked this? [Find it](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/632959313329225728/the-glass-fortress-chapter-8-the-headmaster-of), and me, on tumblr!


	10. The Hunt Resumes

They had no inspected classes Tuesday, although Hagrid was visibly rattled in the afternoon and mixed up several of his statements about porlocks, correcting himself repeatedly. Harry, Ron and Hermione exchanged nervous looks. They had not yet come up with a solution for seeing Hagrid. It didn't seem like a good time to approach him after class, but Harry reminded himself to write and ask how best to visit him after dinner.

He did this before going to see Snape for his Legilimency lesson, although as the Owlery was as far from the dungeons as it was possible to get in the castle, it could not really be considered on the way. Harry also, having considered matters, wrote out an account of his meeting with Dumbledore for Andromeda and Sirius along with a quick summary of what they had seen so far of the inspectors, and sent that under the same encryption spell. He wasn't sure if he would get another response before his meeting with Dumbledore next week, but Sirius definitely should know what he had argued with Dumbledore about - even if describing shouting at the headmaster was mortifying.

Harry waited until Snape had shut the door to his personal quarters to say, "Hermione's coming in a few minutes, but before we get started, sir, I had a meeting with Dumbledore yesterday and I thought I'd better tell you about it."

Snape raised one eyebrow slowly and said, dangerously, "Oh?"

"Well - I know you knew I was having lessons with Dumbledore last year. You know that they were Pensieve memories? I sort of... argued with him about picking them to manipulate me, and a few other things came up. He apologized for using Legilimency on me," Harry continued hastily - he did not want to give, or feel Snape actually needed, an account of his discussion about his own custody with the headmaster, "And for - hiding things."

"And you forgave him?" Snape said, snorting contemptuously.

"I hadn't decided," Harry said. "Hang on, sir, you're saying I _shouldn't?_ Everyone says you're loyal to Dumbledore--" He stopped here, abruptly realizing that that was true of everyone who did not instead say that Snape was still a Death Eater, and recalling his conversation with Draco about Narcissa and Snape's recent deal.

Snape looked surprised to have his opinion actually asked. "I am... certainly more loyal to Dumbledore than to any other, as he seems to be the only relatively functional leader in our society, and his efforts have kept me out of prison. Loyalty does not require blindness. I obey the Headmaster, generally. I do not _trust_ him. I would not advise you to, either. The Headmaster's understanding of ethics may be quite thorough, but his practice of them is selective, even more so than my own."

"Aside from the Legilimency, you mean?" Harry said.

Snape shrugged. "It is possible to make a habit of sacrificing - people, morals, influence - and cease looking for other possibilities. If a carpenter will solve every problem with a hammer, and the Dark Lord will solve every problem with murder, Dumbledore solves every problem with a benevolent smile and a statement of his regret for prioritizing the greater good... 

"I digress. This is not helpful to you. The Headmaster's aims are generally admirable, but he is a habitual liar with only an abstract understanding of the worth of other people's lives, and one should not expect such people to tell the truth simply because it is important or they say they are - or they _actually_ are - very sorry for lying."

Harry fought not to gape. "Sir, you think Dumbledore's a habitual liar, and he's still the best leader we've got?"

"Cornelius Fudge limits that abstract understanding of the worth of human life to his sort of person, and the Dark Lord lacks even that much, while neither is any more capable with the truth," Snape said drily. "I am always open to new alternatives if you should come across one. If you are asking if I believe we should tell the Headmaster about these lessons, my answer is absolutely not. Now--"

A knock came on the door, and he swept past Harry to let Hermione in.

This time Harry tried staring into Hermione's eyes and getting her to work herself up with strong emotions about politics, something she turned out to be quite adept at. He thought he felt the results at least sporadically, but as Snape pointed out, it was hard to tell if that was Legilimency or only his usual response to his friend's feelings. Nevertheless it felt more productive than last time, and Snape agreed that if he had not obtained definitive success, they would try the Legilimency Charm after two more lessons.

Harry regretted that he had already sent his letter to Sirius and Andromeda after the lesson. He had been temporarily distracted by his struggles with Legilimency, but what Snape had said about Dumbledore was now roiling in his mind. On the one hand, Snape calling anyone else a habitual liar with only an abstract understanding of human life was a bit rich; on the other, the fact that even Snape apparently thought so of Dumbledore was disturbing. He would have to mention it to Sirius in his next letter.

The next morning Professor Vector announced they were moving on from review, which made Harry extremely nervous, but he was able to follow the lecture that followed on two variable equations and their uses fairly well. He had at least read over the introduction to this subject and tried some of the problems over the summer, and while he had struggled with solving them having a teacher around to ask helped. 

This lecture was attended by Mr. Zabini, who sat in the back and took notes, then went around asking questions of students the way Mr. Burbage had on Monday in Defense. He did not look so disapproving, and his questions seemed quite a bit less pointed. When he came over to where Harry, Hermione, and Draco and his friends were working on their problem, he asked them how long they had been taking Arithmancy and what they thought of it, how much homework they usually had, and how those of them who had taken the class last year had done on exams, then spent a few minutes asking Hermione about her advanced work. 

Harry was not sure if this was because Mr. Zabini had a different attitude towards the inspections than Mr. Burbage, or only because he was inspecting Professor Vector instead of Moody, however. Towards the end of the class, Harry saw him go over and sit down next to Blaise, who had been uncharacteristically silent; he could not hear what they were discussing, but Blaise snapped his quill with his grip when Mr. Zabini sat down.

Thursday morning, Gryffindor table was filled with speculation about the first Dueling Club meeting for the year, and what it would be like with Moody instead of Professor Black. Harry received a response from Hagrid inviting him and Ron and Hermione to his cabin Sunday at lunch, saying he would come and meet them by the front door at one so they didn't have trouble going out of bounds; he shared it with the others before scribbling their acceptance on the back.

"We'd better get food from the kitchens first," Ron muttered in his ear. Harry grinned.

The Gryffindor O.W.L. class had Professor Moody all afternoon, but the lesson gave no hints on Dueling Club. They had moved on to identifying and dealing with cursed objects. This time, Harry was careful to use the legal spells Moody was teaching them first, although he couldn't resist examining the magic as well when Moody was occupied and wouldn't notice his distraction. It would be good, he thought, to know what the curses they were handling looked like for the future, when he would not necessarily be identifying them for a quiz in school.

After dinner (Hagrid waved at them cheerfully from the head table), they headed to the same expanded classroom that had been used last year. Once again, Flitwick and Moody began the club with a dueling demonstration, but it was very different from the exhibition Flitwick had given with Sirius. Moody's spells were less flashy and elaborate; he slashed, burned, pierced or blasted with his wand, or tore the scenery into chunks to attack or shield, but he did not use the sort of elaborate transfigurations or conjurations of that first duel. For all of that, Harry, watching half with magic, didn't think he used the same spell twice.

Flitwick's style was still showier, but his spells were faster, too, and he seemed to use more effort, dodging more often. It wasn't exactly that Moody was showing more skill than Sirius, Harry thought, so much as that he was more focused and less interested in showmanship. It reminded Harry of the duels Andromeda had practiced over the summer, mostly with Narcissa and Druella, sometimes Remus and Tonks, as Sirius was still fairly ill in August. (Apparently representing the Blacks in the Wizengamot meant it was fairly likely she would be challenged at some point, and need to be able to defend herself in a lethal duel. She had admitted she was rusty, as this was not a skill usually called upon for shopkeeping.)

Just like last year, the teachers put the room back together and called on them to divide into pairs for dueling practice. Flitwick asked any students who had not attended last year to raise their hands, and then come over to his side of the room for some basics; meanwhile, Moody told the rest to keep it nonlethal and start out with some practice bouts, with a two minute limit. He caused a certain amount of alarm by announcing that they would be switching partners each time the timer went off, in order to get some _different_ practice.

"No use fighting just your friends," he said when this announcement provoked dismay. "If your friend only knows three spells, that's all you'll be able to defend against. Come on, you've got plenty of time to talk later, nobody has to be here."

Ron and Hermione, as had often been the case in the past week, sprang together immediately. Harry turned, caught Cho's eye, then made his way over to the corner of the room where her friends were congregated for his first bout. The lights flashed, making him jump - apparently that would be the first signal - and he and Cho bowed.

For all the scramble between bouts was hectic, Harry quickly decided that this was fun. The two minute time limit meant that even very mismatched duels could not become agonizing for the losing party, and no one had much time to get spiteful. 

Cho took him down with a well timed concussive wave to his ankles, something she said her mother had taught her over the summer; then he dueled her strawberry blond friend Marietta, and won with _Incarcerous_. He dueled the Hufflepuff Quidditch captain, Cedric Diggory, and lost badly, although he managed to give Diggory a bloody nose first; then went against Xiulan.

Harry was turning, looking for a free partner who was closer to his age, when he spotted Adrian Pucey, also at a loss, a few feet away. Harry rapidly sidestepped a group of second years as though he was only searching for another older student.

"Potter," Pucey said, nodding in a friendly enough way and side-stepping the younger students himself with what looked like relief. "Hope you're as good here as the Quidditch pitch."

"Almost," Harry said, and bowed, hoping that Pucey was not a vindictive winner, as he was two years older. 

Moody cast the gong spell to signal _go_.

Pucey's first spell emitted a blast like a firecracker from his wand, straight at Harry, who flinched and realized at the same time that that was the point - he'd closed his eyes by instinct. Harry threw himself blindly to the floor and felt something whoosh over his head, then slashed his wand up at Pucey. Having almost been doused in sparks, the first thing on his mind was water, which was not a traditional dueling spell, but Harry's conjured spout was somewhat successful anyway, drenching Pucey and making him splutter in distraction. 

Harry's Expelliarmus connected, but Pucey rolled to dodge the Stunner he cast next and managed to collect his wand off the floor again - he was, Harry remembered, excellent at catching the Quaffle on the pitch, too. They circled each other briefly, Pucey grinning, eyes blown wide with adrenaline. He cast a Stunner at Harry, but Harry deflected it with Protego and nearly connected on its rebound. 

Harry laughed wildly, advancing, and to his surprise Pucey flinched back, wand faltering. Harry raised his wand instinctively but hesitated, feeling it would be unsporting to hit now during a game, and the lights flashed off again, signaling the end of the match.

"You're so damn fast," Pucey said, either recovering or hiding his reaction and laughing, too. He waved his wand, drying himself off. 

"Have to be to get the Snitch," Harry said, straightening his robes. He had to find a new partner, so there was a limited amount of time to talk, but he added, "Good match, Pucey," and received an answering nod as he turned again and met with Hermione this time.

The exhibition had taken up a lot of the time, and Harry's duel with Hermione was the last one. They came to a draw, although Hermione declared Harry the winner, as she had been trying to disentangle herself from a conjured vine when the gong went off and probably would not have blocked his next spell. Harry showed her the real counter; he had learned the spell from Remus in August, and it multiplied itself if Vanishing was attempted.

Moody and Flitwick thanked them and said that anyone with an injury or spell effect they couldn't handle should either send sparks if they were unable to move, or come up to the front of the room to wait in line. Hermione was countering a spell Harry had only half-blocked which had encased several fingers on his left hand to ice, and simultaneously flagging down Ron from across the room, but Harry was not paying attention to either her or the professors; he was trying to spot Adrian Pucey again. 

Finally Harry found him making his way to the door, uninjured and apparently alone. He had been delayed by a knot of excitedly chattering first years who had not realized they were blocking the door. Pucey had been waiting, but another older student snapped at them and made them bunch fearfully away. Harry saw Pucey bend to talk to one young girl who looked like she was about to cry.

"Hang on," he said to Hermione and Ron, who had just arrived and said hello. "There's Pucey by the door--"

Hermione wrenched her eyes up. "Oh, I see--"

"I'm going to go ask him about the first spell he used in our duel - hang around me if you want to help, would you?" While many students had trailed out of the room or were going up to the professors, others were seeking out friends or dueling partners to chat, so this did not sound conspicuous to Harry.

Hermione and Ron followed but trailed back a bit so that they would not give the impression that they were ambushing him. Harry timed his approach so that he reached Pucey just as the first year girl, wearing Ravenclaw colors, thanked him and fled to rejoin her friends outside. 

"Hey, Pucey," Harry said cautiously. "Do you have a minute?"

"I'm not going anywhere fast," Pucey said, moving to the side so they weren't blocking the door. In the corner of his eye, Harry saw Hermione pick up Ron's robe sleeve, which seemed to have been singed, and begin to fix it. "What's up, Potter?"

"I wanted to ask about that first spell you used - the firecrackers?" Harry said.

"Oh, that." Pucey smiled then, looking relieved. "My cousin taught me, he competed for a couple of years. The incantation's one syllable, so you can get it out pretty fast, and you point like this--" Pucey demonstrated, "And picture the explosion you want. It's completely illusory, the only damage you can really do with it is sound. I didn't want to set fire to the classroom."

This was useful, but not really enough to strike up a conversation. "Do you mind showing me again?" Harry asked.

Pucey didn't mind demonstrating, and by then Hermione had finished fixing Ron's sleeve and came up to try the spell, too. Harry glanced at Pucey again to decide if he was looking trapped, but he really didn't seem to be in a hurry, leaning back against the wall and glancing over the room with idle interest. 

"Do you want to go again some time?" Harry asked, and secured an agreement to duel next practice if they were actually allowed to pick partners. Then Cho came over to see him and there didn't seem to be a natural way of keeping the conversation going; but it was a start.

With roughly a month of term over, Harry was starting to feel slightly less overwhelmed by their O.W.L. coursework. This new sense of competence was not particularly well-timed, since it gave him plenty of freedom over the weekend to brood on his meeting with Dumbledore on Monday, but it also gave him more energy to spare for other things. 

Harry was therefore able to enjoy their visit to Hagrid Sunday, during which all three of them assured him repeatedly that they were not at all bored in his classes and found bowtruckles and porlocks extremely interesting. After, they went up to the castle and Harry went to the library to peruse owl order catalogs. Cho had let it slip that her birthday was the thirteenth, and he could not be sure of having any chance to buy something in secret next weekend when he was going to Hogsmeade with her.

"Hermione, help," he said when he had collected the catalogs that seemed potentially relevant and taken them to their usual table. "What do I get my girlfriend for a birthday present?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Just because I'm a girl--" she said, but she leaned over Harry's shoulder, just as fond of giving advice as usual. "Well, do you know what she wants? Has she dropped any hints?"

Harry cast his mind over the last few walks he had taken with Cho. "Not really, except that she said she thought her parents were hinting something about a pet. She wasn't sure because they would normally give her something like that early, before term started. If I wait until next weekend I can see if there's anything she likes, I guess, but if I order it it might not get here in time."

Cho's main hobbies were Quidditch and dueling, just like him, but this meant that they gave relatively little help. She had been receiving Quidditch gear as presents for approximately her entire life from most of her family, and there were only so many wand holsters a person could use. While she studied just as much as any other Ravenclaw, if Cho read for pleasure as well Harry had no idea about it or what her tastes might be. 

Hermione, determining this, rolled her eyes, got out the jewelry catalog, and told Harry to look through it for something like the sort of things he'd seen Cho wear already that didn't cost more than ten galleons.

Harry bent over the catalog industriously. He had seen Ron's shoulders go stiff at the price limit Hermione had given him and was bracing for an explosion.

Sure enough, he had gotten through only a page when Ron said, "Come off it, Hermione, he doesn't need to buy her an engagement gift."

"They've been seeing each other for nearly a year, Ronald," Hermione snapped. "I've no idea if Cho celebrates Christmas, so he might not get her anything else, and Cho knows Harry has money."

"Which is all that's important to girls, apparently," Ron said, but what Hermione's furious response to that would be Harry never found out, as Madam Pince swooped over and kicked both of them out of the library for the day.

Guiltily, Harry stayed without them and continued looking through the catalogs. He wouldn't be allowed to take the owl order forms from the library out anyway, he told himself, and he did need to order the gift. He was just as glad he would not have to witness the rest of that argument, or receive Ron's further commentary while he chose and went up to the Owlery to send the order form out with Hedwig.

On Monday night, Harry again ascended the spiral staircase to Dumbledore's office, feeling rather like he was playing the previous week on repeat. He was perhaps a little less anxious, a little more curious, but his anger over the last year had not particularly diminished.

For once Dumbledore was not awaiting him with a benevolent smile. When Harry came in he was going over pages of tattered notes on his desk instead. Harry approached somewhat tentatively, and drew out the chair to sit down.

"Ah, Harry," Dumbledore said, putting aside the page in front of him. "Good evening. How have your classes been going?"

"Well enough," Harry said, studying the notes. Before Dumbledore was a list of names, most of which Harry did not recognize, although some of the surnames were familiar. "Professor Snape's been loads better, sir. Is there any chance someone is using Polyjuice to impersonate him?"

Dumbledore laughed, to Harry's surprise. "Alastor Moody requested I check already, in fact," he said. "Severus is not an imposter, though that explanation might be the more comforting one; he is merely attempting, at last, to change."

Thinking of his last conversation with Snape, Harry felt rather uneasy about these words from Dumbledore. He pushed it aside. He had to find out what Dumbledore was going to tell him before he could judge if it was true. "So," he said. "What were you going to tell me, sir?"

"If you recall, we last discussed Tom Riddle's manufacture of a Horcrux, or Horcruxes. I understand that you have heard some of this from the Blacks, but allow me to risk repeating them to make sure that we have the same understanding. To make a Horcrux is to commit an act of such utter evil that one's soul is fractured, and then conceal a piece of it in an object. That object can then be hidden and protected separately, and as long as it remains safe, the one who made the Horcrux cannot die. If their body is damaged they will have time to repair it; if it is destroyed they will exist, tied to this plane, until the Horcrux is destroyed or a new body is created.

"Several years ago, I received what I considered proof that Voldemort had split his soul--"

"The diary, sir?" Harry said eagerly.

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows. "Indeed," he said, inclining his head. "From you. While I did not see the diary function, the phenomenon you described to me seemed very suspicious - a mere memory, acting on its own, draining life from a young girl? But perhaps you can anticipate the problem with this assumption."

"He didn't protect the diary," Harry said. "Or, well, he gave it to the Malfoys, but he didn't design it to be protected - as a weapon--"

"Precisely. Which is a rather blase way to treat one's own soul." Dumbledore studied Harry, and Harry frantically pursued the calm of the dive for the Snitch, realizing that his very eagerness with answers would seem odd to someone who did not know he had discussed this very subject with Cassiopeia last year.

"At any rate," Dumbledore went on after a moment, "This left me with an obvious problem. If Voldemort had made Horcruxes, more than one, to protect his soul, they must be located and destroyed; but it was not clear to me how many he might have made, nor of what they would be manufactured, nor where he would place them. I have attempted to discuss the matter with his old classmates, teachers, people who might have known about Tom Riddle's academic interests. Unfortunately many of them are afraid to speak of him, and those who are not are not particularly likely to share their information with me."

Harry hesitated, wondering if he should bring up Lucretia, but Dumbledore was still talking; he could let him finish first.

"Of course, I had taught Tom Riddle myself, and a few people who had made his acquaintance could still be reached, or had spoken to me about him before he became what he is. I know that he expressed an interest in magical artifacts; that he was employed by Borgin and Burke's for a short period of time after school, and vanished at the same time as the disappearance of two Founder's artifacts from a customer of theirs; that the last living Gaunt was imprisoned for the murder of the Riddles when he was at school and after the same holiday Tom Riddle returned wearing one of their heirlooms. 

"These objects seem natural candidates to me, but unfortunately I can confirm little, not having located another. In fact, as the only example of a Horcrux we have so far was made of Tom Riddle's muggle diary, purchased in muggle London in the forties, I may be entirely off track; he may have allowed his pragmatism victory over his flair for the dramatic this once.

"The location of the one also allows guesses, but only that. Abraxas Malfoy was one of his closest friends at school, as we discussed already, and Voldemort left the diary in his care. It is possible that the family of Reinhard Lestrange harbored another for similar reasons. No such magical artifact is cataloged among what was confiscated from the wreck of the Lestranges' home estate in 1982 - I was permitted to examine what remains in the Ministry's custody - and it would not have been destroyed by the ordinary damage to the structure. However, the family has many other properties lying empty or occupied by widows and dependents of the family, waiting for Rodolphus Lestrange to pass on in Azkaban and leave their management to his cousins in France; and there is the family Gringotts vault as well.

"I can make few other guesses, as Tom Riddle had no other close friends in school, and Voldemort fewer still. Any of Bellatrix Lestrange's possessions at the time of her arrest would be with her husband's property, and I doubt that Voldemort would leave two Horcruxes together for the sake of sentiment. I had thought to extend my search to locations I believe are important to him, or were at one time, and to make further inquiries of people I know that he had contact with. You see before you the sum of my current information," Dumbledore finished, and opened his hands over the cluttered desk.

Harry hesitated. He longed to dive into the parchment before him, but he felt that if Dumbledore was at least being honest with him - and that did seem to be the case so far - he should extend the same favor at least on this subject; and anyway he couldn't see how it would hurt to share what he had learned over the summer.

"Professor," he said. "You know that Lucretia Black came back to the family after Muriel Prewett died?"

Dumbledore frowned at him. "I do. Did you speak to her over the summer?"

"Yeah, Sirius and Andromeda thought we could get information about Voldemort at school from her," Harry said. "She might have been lying, and she wasn't willing to really commit to anything, but she told us about some of the things he was interested in school. Do you want to hear?"

"Very much so, Harry."

"She said - the Slytherins talked about theoretical research projects, and Tom seemed too interested, so she could tell he meant it more than the others. He talked about Horcruxes, and he was interested in - creating a magically significant number of them, or making experimental designs that could interact with others, which sounded like the diary to me, or using an animal or something else that could be possessed. She didn't admit to knowing anything for sure about what he'd done."

Dumbledore was nodding, slowly. "A magically significant number... Perhaps three, or four or five, or seven - I cannot imagine that going higher than seven to eleven or more would have seemed advisable, or been possible. But is it the number of Horcruxes or the total pieces? ...Well, I have a few more avenues to pursue, having confirmed that he discussed this at school. Thank you, Harry, that is extremely helpful."

"Right," Harry said a little awkwardly. "So - what are you going to do next?" He looked down again at the notes.

Dumbledore smiled wanly. "I am still determining exactly what my next move should be, particularly as, alas, there are responsibilities I cannot freely abandon. Horace Slughorn has been extremely difficult to contact in recent years - you recall we saw a few of his memories last year - and I believe he may have discussed Dark Arts with Tom as a student, if I can get him to admit to it. This--" He pushed a sheet across the desk, "Is the list of Tom Riddle's associates at school; I have marked off those who are dead or missing, and those who have refused contact with me, accordingly, but I am still attempting to contact a few.

"But I think on the whole my next move had better be investigating those areas in which Voldemort may have concealed a Horcrux. It will likely not be possible to gain any entrance to the Lestrange estate while Ino Lestrange is the main member of the family still living in Britain - she is Reinhard Lestrange's widow, and I believe was involved with the Death Eaters herself - although... If you are willing, Harry, to write to Sirius to ask, he may have some access to properties that were a part of Bellatrix's dower; it would depend on the terms of the contract, and possibly her will, if she had one. 

"Assuming that that avenue is impossible, I believe the situation may actually improve if and when Rodolphus Lestrange dies. His closest male relative in France is Alexandre Lestrange, who fled the country when Gaidic Lestrange inherited and began to support Voldemort openly and sent several letters opposing him to British newspapers in the seventies. If this should not occur, breaking into the properties may be necessary, but I should like to have a better idea of where to look before beginning an extensive campaign of larceny.

"Therefore I must extrapolate to other areas of personal significance. I evaluated the site of the orphanage Tom Riddle was raised in over the summer, although I never thought it likely. The place has been demolished and replaced with a muggle office block, and there is no sign of any magic in the foundations or the immediate area. I also examined Riddle House earlier this month--" 

Harry tensed, remembering his vision.

"--Where I found signs of recent magical occupation, but no concealed objects, so while Lord Voldemort may have recently visited his muggle father's ancestral home, it does not appear to be the site of a Horcrux. I shall return and examine the Gaunt shack soon, although I do not think it a likely location for its very ignominy. Aside from that there are several locations I know exist, but not well enough to identify them: a sea cave that the orphanage visited on holiday where Tom Riddle performed some of his most impressive accidental magic as a child; the private laboratory he used for his rather disturbing published research. I have been looking for candidates for these locations for a few months, and visited a few possible sites over the summer, but with no success."

Harry frowned. "Sirius's Aunt Cassie - the one whose portrait is in the library - co-authored a paper with him, didn't she? Would she know where the lab is?"

Dumbledore smiled thinly. "I discussed the matter with her a few weeks ago, and unfortunately she told me that they used her own facilities for that particular atrocity. She did have some more information for me about his description of his own lab, and it will be of assistance - here is that page," Dumbledore said, sorting through and handing several more lists to Harry. "At any rate, if you and your guardian are amenable, when I have time to make another trip I may take you with me--"

"Definitely," Harry said rapidly, then "I mean, I'll have to ask Sirius."

"Please do." Dumbledore inclined his head. "The other major avenue I have been pursuing is in reading through Tom Riddle's research for other locations that might have been of emotional significance. I was interested in the records of his acquisitions for Borgin and Burke's, as they allowed him his first contact with many ancient magical properties, but unfortunately the owner was unwilling to cooperate. I have been keeping an eye out for reports of Founder's artifacts on the market, but the one I was notified of over the summer turned out to be fraudulent, unfortunately."

Harry left soon after, mind reeling with information, but feeling rather better about Dumbledore on the whole. He would have to write to Sirius and Andromeda again soon to tell them what he had found out. For now, he found Ron and Hermione and dragged them into an empty classroom to tell them all about the discussion he had had, ending with the need to ask Sirius about the Lestrange properties. Both of them were excited about the prospect of Harry going along with Dumbledore to investigate Voldemort's past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Liked this? [Reblog it on tumblr](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/633606777391480832/the-glass-fortress-chapter-9-the-hunt-resumes), or just come talk to me!


	11. Kin and Commotion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Ron and Hermione conversation Harry walks in on is based loosely off of his reaction in chapter 21 of OotP, where they weren't dating.

A letter from Sirius arrived Tuesday morning for Harry. Rex, a small, reddish Scops Owl, nearly collided with his face delivering it and drew everyone's attention. He didn't want to open it in the Great Hall under those circumstances, but their first lesson was Charms, an excellent class in which to do anything private. Harry's Charms work had been improving since Professor Flitwick's help to him last year, and he had mostly mastered the spell they had been working on; so once they had been set to practice, he took the letter out of his bag and muttered the password to decrypt it, before breaking the seal to read under his desk.

_Dear Harry,_

_The first thing I want to say is that I'm proud of you and I love you. I don't think you were wrong to shout at Dumbledore - let me know if you've been in trouble for it since - and you have a right to defend the privacy of your own mind._

_Dumbledore was telling the truth when he said that we discussed the Defense curse explicitly when he hired me. I probably should have told you about it at the time; my main excuse is that I'd only known you for about a month and I honestly wasn't sure how you'd take it. You remember I was still a bit of a headcase at that point and I wanted to be somewhere I'd have to eat and sleep regularly - and somewhere I had an excuse not to deal with the Black tenants yet while I recovered._

_That said, I think you walked in on me complaining to Narcissa about the memories he showed you last year, and in combination I find his selection of me as a candidate somewhat disturbing. I suppose all's well that ends well, especially since I'm hardly about to go off to teach again now._

_I am angry to hear that his political ideals influenced where he placed you. I had thought that he wasn't aware of Lily's objections to her sister as a guardian, and only considered the Dursleys to have a greater claim than James's more distant family (something he would have been right about if they weren't despicable human beings), and that Petunia would know enough from Lily to seek out help for your political education. (Which she definitely does, because Lily talked about James's political position with her parents when she agreed to marry him, and Petunia was in the room and threw a fit about Lily putting on airs.)_

Harry had to stop briefly here and absorb the fact that Aunt Petunia had known he had a seat on the Wizengamot and never so much as mentioned its existence to him.

_I don't completely disagree with Dumbledore about the aristocracy, for the record, which he should know. I was a Marxist when I was younger - ask Hermione if you need that explained to you - and I agreed with Dumbledore during the last war. I still think the abolition of the nobility is an admirable goal, but I find that now that I'm in a position to do something about it I feel more cautious about how we proceed than I did at eighteen. If you're interested in the subject - and you should hear me out about it eventually - we can talk about it over hols, or I'll write you another letter. There's enough to it that I don't want to derail this letter, and I think you'd probably absorb it better in person anyway._

_Dumbledore's use of Legilimency on you is still extremely disturbing to me. Again, I really should have said this to you last year, but I discussed pressing charges over it with Narcissa and Andromeda. (We concluded it would go nowhere with Dumbledore's political position at the time, and we'd have to explain at that point that you were learning Occlumency and from where, which would create problems for Snape. And, more to the point, us.)_

_I assume you've already talked to Dumbledore by now - sorry it took me so long to answer - but I want to tell you either way that I think you should use your own judgment on what you share about the Horcruxes. I can't see that there's a reason not to tell him, the more people working on it, the better, but you aren't responsible for helping him, either. Feel free to write back with any further questions you have._

_Regarding the inspectors, Andromeda and I thank you for the update. Write back and tell us how your classes are going and how Ron and Cho are - we all miss you._

_Love,  
Sirius_

Harry swallowed hard, eyes stinging, and had to rapidly shove the letter under his desk as Professor Flitwick drew near.

This letter was personal enough that he did not want to show it to his friends in its entirety, but he told them in whispers that Sirius had confirmed that he'd talked to Dumbledore about the curse, and that he didn't think there was any need to conceal information about the Horcruxes from him. Ron was visibly relieved and Hermione visibly thoughtful. He could reply, Harry thought, in two days after he had made another attempt to talk to Pucey.

"I'm going to be gone again this evening," Hermione said to them both when Harry had put the letter away. "Tomorrow, too - it's another holiday."

"How many do you _have?_ " Ron said, although he didn't seem terribly offended. "I'll see you this weekend at least, right?"

Harry waited until Ron was going up to return their ravens to lean closer to Hermione and say, "If you want him to come along, you have to ask him, you know."

"He could take an interest himself," Hermione muttered.

"He _is_ interested in you. You go off on your own for classes all the time," Harry said. "If you just say you're leaving, he doesn't know he should argue about it."

"I just - I don't know, it's going to be boring, Yom Kippur is about _repentance_ , and the only reason Ron sat through Passover last spring was the food."

"So you want him to want to go but not to actually go?" Harry said, feeling slightly out of his depth.

"No, I want him to go because it's important to me and if we're going to be - together--"

"You've been seeing each other a few weeks, 'Mione," Harry said, quietly. "You can ask him next year, you know."

"I suppose," Hermione said, crossing her arms.

Moody again set them to two minute rounds for the first twenty minutes of the meeting, but afterward he and Flitwick called everyone together. They made a list of the most commonly used dueling spells on the board. Harry was both surprised and pleased to see that he had learned every spell on the list, even if there were a few he could use more practice with. They gave instruction on each of the spells, and then told everyone to break up into pairs and practice the new spells, and if they had learned them all, their worst one. 

Harry turned, catching Pucey's eye gratefully, and went off to a clear space with him. They spent about ten minutes with Pucey practicing _Relashio_ while Harry tried to maintain a grip on his arm, then switched to allow Harry to practice casting and dispelling a temporary blinding hex he could only pull off half the time in a fight.

Harry was just wondering how he was going to actually talk to Pucey when the professors called a five minute break before they allowed longer matches for the last fifteen minutes.

"You really are good," Pucey said, perching on the edge of a desk that had been pushed to the wall. "I wasn't too sure about practicing with a fifth year." He smiled to take the sting out of this. "But it's not as though I have much of anyone to partner."

"You don't have friends in your classes?" Harry asked, surprised.

Pucey shrugged and leaned back on his hands. "People I sit with and can borrow notes off of, sure - Antigone Selwyn's alright, and Cynric Crabbe's not as bad as some of his cousins - but nobody I'd want to give permission to hex me. I don't know if you know much about my family..."

"I heard some from Sirius, recently," Harry said, not wanting to outright lie when Pucey would find out sooner or later.

"Yes, you would, wouldn't you?" Pucey looked away. "My parents were killed by the - by You-Know-Who himself, a few years before yours. Most people in Slytherin know it. If I'd had any sense I would have argued with the hat, but I didn't realize it, then. When my aunt was in school it wasn't so politically united, so I didn't expect that at eleven - she raised me, and she was a Slytherin."

"I'm sorry," Harry said, meaning it. "I hope you got on with your aunt better than I did."

"Oh, yeah, Aunt Julia's great," Pucey said with no hesitation. "It's just the two of us, since--" he hesitated. "She lost the rest of her family, too."

"Oh," Harry said awkwardly. "I'm sorry to hear that. Was that why you were sent to her?"

"No, it happened after my parents died, when I was almost four." Pucey inspected the strap of his bag. "Her kids were grown up when my parents died, so I think that was why I was sent there, that and her husband's family was higher ranked than Aunt Claudia's. Death Eaters hit the house when Aunt Julia was out. My cousin Marlene - she was twenty-one then, she hadn't married yet when she died - stuffed me in a wardrobe and cast a Silencing spell on the door, then ran down to help her father and her brothers... They all died. It took twelve hours for the spell to wear off and the Aurors to find me."

Harry's breath caught. "That's horrible, I'm sorry I asked."

Pucey shook his head. "You might as well, I was trying to work out how to say - that was why I flinched when you laughed, last time? You probably learned to duel from the Blacks, so it make sense, I just... I remember a little bit of what I heard, just pieces really, but the Silencing spell only went one way."

So Bellatrix had been there, when Pucey's uncle and cousins had been killed; and Pucey had heard her laughing.

Harry winced. "I'm sorry," he said again. "I'll try not to do that this time."

"Thanks, Potter." Pucey half-smiled. "Merlin, this has been a depressing conversation. I promise I'm not always like this. Anyway, Marlene, my cousin, was a friend of your mother's actually, we have some pictures of them together. So I always sort of wondered about you, but Flint didn't encourage fraternization with the enemy." Pucey rolled his eyes. "So there was never a good time before. Come on, they're about to call break's over."

Harry was not exactly performing at his best in the following duel, but he didn't imitate Sirius and Druella too closely when dueling, and he didn't lose too badly, so it could have been worse. Afterwards he met Ron and Hermione and went up to Gryffindor, then found a seat near the fire to begin writing his letter. It took several drafts and a lot of editing.

_Dear Sirius & Andromeda,_

_Sirius, thanks for telling me all of that, and I love you too._

_I talked to Dumbledore again Monday and he said a lot more about places he's looking for Horcruxes. He looked into the orphanage Tom Riddle grew up in and Riddle House over the summer (he said he found signs of recent magical occupation there), and he's going to check the Gaunt hut soon. He said he's trying to figure out where Voldemort's first lab was, and where a sea cliff the orphanage took children to on holiday was, because Tom Riddle told him about practicing accidental magic there, but he doesn't know exactly where either site is._

_He also wanted me to ask you if you have the ability to access any of the Lestrange properties because of Bellatrix's dowry? I hope that question will make sense to you. He thinks there might be something there, since the Malfoys had the diary, and Reinhard Lestrange was Tom Riddle's other close school friend._

_I told him about what Lucretia said about magically significant numbers, and Tom Riddle wanting to experiment with Horcrux design - I hadn't got your letter then but it didn't seem like there was any point in keeping that secret, I agree. I don't know what I think of him either, but it makes sense for me to know what he's doing anyway, doesn't it?_

_Speaking of which he asked if I'd want to come with him when he investigating Horcrux sites, and if you'd let me do it if I did, so this is me asking._

_We've had a few more inspected classes but I can't tell you much new. Mr. Zabini was in Arithmancy last Wednesday and took notes and asked us about Professor Vector's teaching methods, and he went to talk to Blaise Zabini after and Blaise looked upset, but I didn't hear any of it. I couldn't really tell what he thought of Vector, although I like her._

_We had Umbridge in Care of Magical Creatures yesterday and she was really awful to Hagrid, acting like he couldn't understand her talking and she had to point and use small words, and asking nasty questions about his parents (do you know if it's true he's half giant?). Hagrid got upset, you know what he's like under pressure, but he was fine last week when Madam Marchbanks was in his class, so I hope it'll be okay. His lessons have been great this year, he did bowtruckles and porlocks and now he's on krups, and he really knows what he's talking about. So I can't see what anyone would have to complain about, right?_

_I also talked to Adrian Pucey in Dueling Club. We didn't get into politics too much since we didn't have much time to talk, but he seemed pretty friendly. He told me that he'd been curious about me, because of what happened to both our parents, and he knows his cousin Marlene was friends with my mum, because his aunt's got photos of Marlene with her up. (Would that be Marlene McKinnon? I didn't have time to ask.) He also said he has an awkward time in Slytherin - he said he didn't have anyone to partner with in his class because he wouldn't want to give any of them permission to hex him, but he's sort of friends with Antigone Selwyn and Cynric Crabbe ('not as bad as his cousins.')_

_I'm doing okay. Classes are a lot of work this year, but I think I'm better prepared for it than I was last year. (It would be nice if McGonagall didn't seem so surprised when I manage a spell during the first lesson!) Moody's a really great teacher, even if he gets kind of morbid when he gives examples. We're learning loads. (He's not as good as you, though, Sirius!)_

_Andromeda, you offered to give us advice about revising, didn't you? When do you think is a good time to start? All I have is Hermione, who's despairing that she didn't get started last spring, and Ron, who just does whatever he can't argue Hermione out of making him do._

_Speaking of which, Hermione and Ron are dating now (which you probably already know)._

_At first I was happy because it's been obvious that they like each other forever, but I don't know now. It seems like they're fighting even more than usual, and it's not friendly anymore. They'd go off and not be speaking to each other for a few weeks every so often last year and the year before that, I mean, but mostly they weren't really mad when they bickered every day. But now they get really upset, and Ron jumps on Hermione about money too, and he never did before. I want things to work out, but mostly I want us all to be friends, and I'm afraid if they break up they won't be able to go back to how things were._

_Cho and I are doing fine, by the way. We're going to Hogsmeade this weekend. Her birthday is the thirteenth, so I ordered her some earrings by owl. I don't have a lot of time after class most weeks, and she's doing loads of N.E.W.T. classes, so we've been meeting on Saturday morning and having breakfast together outside, to make sure we see each other. I can't believe she's going to be of age in a week - most of the time I forget, but really we're closer to two years apart than one, and Hermione's almost a year older than me. Sirius, was it strange to be a year older than most of your classmates?_

_Andromeda, you'll probably hear from Hermione separately about the inspectors - I'm sure she's heard loads I haven't. Let us know if you need anything else from us._

_Love,  
Harry_

He didn't feel certain about the closing in a letter that included Andromeda, or about saying what he had to Sirius; the piece about Ron and Hermione especially had slipped out in his last draft almost without him noticing. But he would feel very strange writing two separately enclosed letters, and half of the letter was more for Andromeda in the first place, so he folded the parchment over to seal it and went up to the Owlery before curfew.

The first Saturday in October was bright and windy. Quidditch for Harry had been rescheduled to start a couple of hours later and end much closer to Slytherin's start time to accommodate everyone on the team who would want to go. He and Cho walked down to Hogsmeade in a cluster of students leaving about the same time, including her friend Marietta, her little sister Xiulan with a group of her year mates, and a few girls Cho introduced Harry to.

"No Carya?" Harry asked Cho once they were strung out on the path and had some privacy. He wondered if she and Cho were having problems.

"She didn't want to bring Irene into the village," Cho said. 

"Irene?" Harry asked.

Cho gave him a startled look. "I forgot, you wouldn't have seen her much last term! Irene's her daughter, she was born in July. They timed it so she wouldn't be in school. She's got a private room now, and there are monitoring spells and everything and she has a few other students who babysit for her in Ravenclaw, but she didn't want to leave her with one of them to go all the way to Hogsmeade, or carry her down with the... security situation. I think she'll probably change her mind by the time she has to sit out a few more visits, though."

"Oh," Harry said, and was unable to come up with anything to say for a moment. "Wasn't that hard though, during her O.W.L. year?"

"Yeah, she was afraid she'd feel too sick to concentrate during the exams, but she didn't end up having too much trouble," Cho said. "I honestly don't know why they timed it like this, it's not like Asbolus was really pushing her to have kids right away, except that the Carrows don't have any male children... But their Head's a woman, they can have a female heir, and Asbolus has three cousins still in school if something happens to him, it's not that urgent."

"Did Carya tell you that was why?" Harry asked.

Cho shook her head. "I didn't want to ask, it's sort of a rude thing to demand an explanation about, isn't it? --Anyway, where do you want to go first?"

Hoping to head off any further visits to Madam Puddifoot's, Harry had asked over the summer for advice about where to go in Hogsmeade. He was therefore prepared to say, "Are you hungry yet? There's this place Tonks mentioned--"

They had sandwiches in the European style cafe recommended by Tonks, and had a good time teasing each other about the Ravenclaw-Gryffindor Quidditch match at the end of the season. Cho swore to knock him off his broom before he caught the Snitch, and Harry solemnly suggested that she steal his glasses, since that would be her only means of finding it before him. 

"Are you looking forward to being seventeen?" he asked, as they finished up their drinks and the last few chips.

"Yeah, I guess," Cho said. "I mean, it'll be nice to be able to do magic in public."

This seemed oddly unenthusiastic, but Harry was not sure of the best way to ask why, or if he should leave it alone. Instead he asked when she was going to get her Apparition license, and they discussed the classes Hogwarts held spring term and what Cho had heard about her older friends' experiences as they got up and wandered back towards High Street. Beneath the wind, it was a warm day for October, and while they debated going into the Three Broomsticks they agreed to keep walking a bit first.

They were turning the corner of High Street and the final avenue before the path leading out of the village when someone called Cho.

Harry almost drew, and Cho jumped, hand flying to her opposite sleeve; then they both recognized her parents, her mother's chair hovering comfortably a foot or two off the ground now that they were in a magical area.

"Mum, Dad," Cho said, rocking back on her heels and sounding slightly stunned. Then she glanced at Harry and said determinedly, "What was my childhood kneazle's name?"

"Peony," her mother said, "Good job. We hoped we'd catch you today, since we can't be there for your birthday. Shall we stick around for a bit, or just say hi?"

Harry glanced at Cho, trying to decide whether she was embarrassed and he should fade off and find another student to hang around, but as though she had guessed what he was thinking, she reached over and took his hand. "No, it's nice to see you," she said, glancing between her parents. "Er, do you want to go sit down somewhere..."

"We were talking about buying you your gift in person," her father said, glancing at the pet store at the corner of the street, Cordelia's Creatures. "Do you still want another cat?"

Cho's eyes lit up. "That would be great," she said, "--You remember Harry from the summer. Harry, you remember my parents. Come on."

Harry had never been in the Hogsmeade pet shop, since Hogwarts stocked owl care supplies in the Owlery, but he knew Hermione visited it occasionally to buy things for Crookshanks. Cordelia's Creatures was made up of a bright, rectangular room with a broad wooden counter. There were fewer animals than Magical Menagerie in Diagon Alley, and most of the shop was instead taken up by supplies. But a short wall near one end was made up of cages and tanks with small creatures in them, and a number of cats wandered the shop, sleeping on top of shelves, chasing insects or climbing racks of merchandise.

"I'm here for a cat," Cho said to the girl behind the counter. "The loose ones are available, right?"

"Sure, just say hi and see which of them likes you," the girl said, so Cho was shortly seated in the biggest open space in the store, cross legged and talking to the cats. Harry crouched by her, slightly uncertainly; he could hear Cho's parents talking to each other near the entrance, but not what they were saying.

A small black cat who put him in mind of a shadow crept up to his lap and sniffed his hand. Harry pet it, but said, "I've already got an owl." Meanwhile two cats were investigating Cho's knees, one a Siamese and the other a gray-striped tabby, and a third, delicately pretty calico cat was sniffing her hair from behind. Harry was about to point the calico out, uncertain Cho had noticed, when it reared up, put its front paws on her back, and then leapt to her shoulder.

Cho started and giggled, delighted, and reached up to pet its head. "Hi," she said to it. "What's your name?"

"That's Viviane," the shop girl said. "She's usually pretty shy, she must like you. You'll need things to take care of a cat at the castle, too, right?" she said, obviously pleased to make a large sale, and started bundling them together. 

They agreed to go up to the Three Broomsticks with her parents; Cho apologized and asked Harry if he minded, but she was obviously happy, and as he pointed out, they would have plenty of Hogsmeade visits the rest of the year anyway. He wondered if not seeing them had been bothering her before, and that was why she had seemed unenthusiastic.

The conversation on the way back up High Street took a distinct flavor of interrogation. Harry hadn't really interacted directly with Cho's parents much last summer. He answered questions about the classes he was taking for O.W.L.s and what he thought of Moody as a teacher - Mrs. Lin laughed and told several alarming stories about him as an Auror trainer - while Cho scratched her new cat's ears, looking completely distracted. Occasionally she would start and answer a question about her or Xiulan before drifting back away.

Mr. Chang held the door into the pub for his wife and her chair, and Cho and Harry, who were carrying the cat and all of the pet supplies respectively. Harry volunteered to get drinks from the counter while they found a table, passing off the pet supplies. He glanced around the room while he went, and tried not to smirk, spotting Ron and Hermione kissing at a table near the fire in a way distinctly reminiscent of Ron and Lavender last year - though Hermione looked less like she was trying to clumsily eat Ron's face.

He started making his way back to the table, but was blocked on the wrong side of the doorway when the pub door flung open to admit a large crowd of rowdy third years, excitedly babbling about what they had and hadn't yet seen on their first Hogsmeade visit. Around them more than over them, Harry saw Cho dangling an old quill from her bag for Viviane. He was thinking of how pretty Cho was with that particular expression of delight on her face when the third years went abruptly quiet and in the sudden absence of chatter he heard, "We do approve so far," from Mr. Chang. "If this is what you both want..."

"He's _fifteen_ ," Cho said softly and heatedly, removing any doubt as to the subject of their conversation. "How should he know if it is?"

Harry shoved an empty chair out of his way in a hurry, clattering it against the floor, and went around the last third year as she came in, then loudly excused himself to a tall woman in a navy veil seated by the entrance. "I have the drinks," he announced, and busied himself passing them out and taking Viviane from Cho's arms so that she could have a sip of butterbeer.

He felt even more stilted around Cho's parents, realizing this was probably as much an audition for him as Cho's boyfriend as it was about her birthday, but they were both good at keeping the conversation up. Cho seemed to be determined to pretend everything was normal. For once Harry was slightly relieved when Cho's parents left and she apologetically hailed Marietta to help get Viviane and her supplies back up to the Ravenclaw dorms before her cat was overexcited by the pub's atmosphere. He needed some time to think.

Harry didn't have to immediately find another companion in the crowded Three Broomsticks, but Ron and Hermione were no longer avidly kissing, so it seemed safe to approach. He went to get another round of drinks first, seeing that their glasses were empty.

Unfortunately, this did not seem to be Harry's day for walking in on pleasant conversations; by the time he reached Ron and Hermione, they were arguing.

"--business it is of _yours_ ," Hermione was saying heatedly and a little tearfully.

"You're _my_ girlfriend!" Ron snapped. "If you're going around writing to him behind my back--"

"Ron, Hermione," Harry said loudly. "I brought you some more drinks!"

They both jumped. Hermione looked relieved; Ron was still fuming, but visibly struggling to calm down as Harry passed out butterbeer to the two of them and hauled up a chair from another table, any hesitation he had felt about interrupting their date completely gone.

"Harry!" Hermione said hastily, wiping at her eyes with her robe sleeve. "Weren't you and Cho going together?"

"Yeah, but she went back to the castle with Marietta - her parents got her a cat for her birthday after all, and she needed a Ravenclaw girl to help her carry stuff," Harry said. He had had some vague intention of asking Hermione to interpret the conversation he had overheard Cho having with her parents, but it seemed insensitive to do it now, and anyway he might be better off talking to Andromeda or Sirius. He remembered now that it had been a general subject in Andromeda's letter, and surely she would not mind him asking about his actual girlfriend.

"Oh, really? Has she named it yet?" Hermione said, so Harry spent several minutes describing Viviane the calico cat, during which Ron's flush receded and Harry began to hope they had forgotten their argument.

Unfortunately, Ron only took the breather to say more evenly, "Have you been writing to Krum all along, Hermione?"

" _Yes_ ," Hermione snapped, face gone taut with irritation again. "I told you we'd planned on it last spring, Ron, and I only agreed to seeing you _a few weeks ago_."

"I just don't like it--"

"You don't get to choose my friends!" Hermione said. "He put up with me going around with you and Harry all the time all last year--"

"So you wish you were still seeing him, then, do you--"

"Because he's _an adult_ and not a childish brat!" Hermione snarled, voice jumping in both pitch and volume. 

The tables near them were growing quiet. Harry tried to think of a way to intervene, but if his initial interruption hadn't been enough he wasn't sure what would help more.

"So you think I'm a child?" Ron said, voice gone ugly. "In comparison to _Vicky_ \--"

"I certainly think you're acting like one," Hermione said coldly. "It's none of your business who I write to."

"So you wouldn't mind letting me see your letters, then?" 

" _Ronald Weasley_ ," Hermione said furiously. "If you think being my boyfriend gives you a right to go through my mail--"

"You showed me the ones you got from Sirius and Andromeda!"

" _Sirius and Andromeda_ are writing about things that actually matter to us all, like politics, and Andromeda actually addressed you in her letter! If I knew that was giving you a license to demand to search my post I wouldn't have!"

"Oh, no," Harry said loudly, "There's a beetle in this glass." Ron and Hermione both jumped; they had obviously forgotten he was there in their haste to go back to arguing. He flicked it off the rim of his butterbeer glass and watched it zoom crookedly off to the wall.

"You can have mine, if you want, I've already had a pint and I barely touched this one," Ron said, trying to recover with aplomb.

"It's alright, I finished one with Cho," Harry said, and hastily moved to take advantage of the opening. "Have you two finished the Potions essay for Monday yet? I was in the library yesterday but I couldn't find the fifth component--"

Hermione and Ron talked over each other hurriedly in their efforts to go along with the change of subject, but they wouldn't look each other in the eye. Harry miserably wondered how much longer this would last, and whether what followed would be any better.


	12. Slander and Sweethearts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Certain pieces of dialogue, description and text in this chapter are adapted from GoF chpts 27-28 and OotP chpt 18.

On Sunday Hermione announced yet another holiday, though she said this was the last important one of the season. This time she explicitly invited both Ron and Harry to come with her. Professor Sinistra had gathered a group of students in an inner courtyard which was surrounded on all four sides by walls and therefore not subject to the sunset curfew. 

They spent an amusing four hours helping the other students there build a sort of hut out of branches gathered from the edges of the Forbidden Forest, and subsequently hang it with flowers and paper decorations that had been charmed to move and flash colors. The day had been sunny, but rain started up by evening. Professor Sinistra conjured a rain shield under the roof of half of the hut, and a number of the Jewish students took turns getting drenched in the other half while waving strange looking plants for reasons Hermione was too busy giggling to explain coherently, although she tried.

The autumn sunlight re-emerged briefly Monday afternoon, but by the evening the sky was blustery and gray, and rain was pouring down when they got up on Tuesday morning. Ron and Hermione seemed to be pretending that their argument on Saturday had never happened, although Ron eyed Hermione dubiously during morning post. Care of Magical Creatures was relocated into a ground floor classroom, but the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs were all soaking wet at the start from the dash from the greenhouses anyway. 

Draco had not often been over at meals this year, apparently settled into amicable relations with Daphne and Tracy, but he came over at dinner to talk to Hermione and Harry about their Arithmancy projects. This gave him a chance to ask Harry in an undertone what was going on with Ron and Hermione when they were distracted kissing.

"Nothing," Harry muttered, hoping they wouldn't hear. "They just had an argument Saturday in Hogsmeade, Ron hadn't realized she was still writing to Viktor Krum."

Draco frowned, but gave no opinion for Harry to have to argue or agree with.

At eight, Harry and Ron proceeded to the dungeons for Harry's next Legilimency lesson. Snape had agreed that next week he would learn the Legilimens Charm if no progress was made, so Harry set about preparing to fail miserably with a lighter heart; at least it would soon be over.

To his surprise, however, the little flashes of emotion he had reached in his previous few lessons had turned a corner. He was able to correctly give the subject Ron was concentrating on in addition to the emotion, and he could sometimes follow through and give more of Ron's thoughts until his concentration broke. At that point he would need strong emotion to pick up on them again. 

This did not really feel like success, as Harry had a limited amount of control over what came out of his mouth and he ended up embarrassing them both mildly several times. He also still had a hard time telling _how_ and when he entered Ron's mind. But Snape was nearly encouraging, saying that the Legilimens Charm would be unnecessary after all, as Harry's concentration had at last proved adequate. He sent Harry off with yet more extracurricular homework and told him to make sure to continue alternating partners next lesson.

Wednesday morning, Harry and Ron eyed the continued pounding rain with trepidation at breakfast, thinking of Quidditch practice that night. With the unusually tight pitch schedule, Angelina was sure to want to go on whether the rain stopped or not. Harry was about to remark that at least it would prepare them for the game in case this weather continued into November to boost Ron's spirits when an unfamiliar owl swooped down from the post. 

"It's from Sirius!" Harry hissed - Rex must have been otherwise occupied - and broke it open quickly, casting the countercharm to the encryption. Ron and Hermione were sitting on either side of him today, and could probably block anyone else from seeing it.

A large portion of his own letter had been personal, and so was much of the first section of the letter; Harry folded it over hastily after skimming it to read in more depth later, cheeks feeling hot. (Andromeda, who had written part of this letter too, mentioned that her mother was going to write to Hermione and see if she could help with Ron. This left Harry both relieved and hoping neither of his friends had spotted that line.) 

The rest of it, however, was about the political situation and Voldemort. Sirius said that he would look for Bellatrix's marriage contract in the family archives and would get back to Harry and Dumbledore with an answer one way or another about the Lestrange estate. Furthermore, he didn't think Bellatrix had left any of her papers in the house, but on the off chance he was wrong he'd look and see if there were any more hints about locations important to Voldemort. He also said that he wasn't going to forbid Harry from going with Dumbledore to search, but he wanted to require Dumbledore to take along a Black family member; he wanted Harry's opinion and would then write Dumbledore directly. 

Andromeda thanked Harry for the information about Umbridge and the inspectors, and confirmed Hermione had sent her impressions as well. She requested either of them write with any further information. She also suggested that if Harry was worried about Hagrid, they try to get his lesson plans out of him and write to her if any might require adjustment. Finally, she thanked Harry for talking to Adrian Pucey and said that on the basis of his information about his friendliness, Sirius would write directly to invite him to tea in Hogsmeade next month. They were welcome to keep talking to him as they liked.

Ron and Hermione read over Harry's shoulders and made little noises of interest or dismay, but there wasn't much time to discuss it before Harry and Hermione had to go off to Arithmancy. Since they sat with Draco's Slytherin friends there, it wasn't a good class to talk about politics in, but keeping up with the lecture was distracting and difficult enough that Harry did not have much time to feel frustrated. At lunch, planning how they might get Hagrid to give them details of his lessons, and - much more difficult - how to get him to change his mind about anything after, took up much of the conversation.

Quidditch practice that evening was miserable. Angelina had planned to drill them on a new move called the Sloth Grip Roll, but the rain pounded down as heavy as hailstones, and nobody could see anyone else on the pitch. She persisted in claiming it would be useful for a full hour, undoubtedly thinking of the difficulty she would have rescheduling, before giving up and calling it quits. Harry gratefully used a charm Sirius had taught him over the summer to dry his hair and clothes, then performed it for Ron as well.

Cho's birthday was Friday, which was a difficult day for Harry owing to his full schedule, finishing off with Astronomy class at night,. He went over to the Ravenclaw table to eat dinner with her, and gave her her birthday gift on a walk inside the castle for more privacy. Over the weekend she was wearing the earrings he had bought her every time he spotted her, and his stomach gave a startling leap every time.

Monday arrived with the usual last minute panic over studying and homework. The one good side to their schedule this year, thought Harry, was that they had plenty of time in first period History of Magic to catch up on assignments for other classes. He finished proofreading his Potions essay, finished hastily after Quidditch practice Saturday and containing an error or two, and stuffed it back in his bag well before they had to make their way to the dungeons.

To Harry's surprise, Draco came hurrying up the corridor before they could reach it, saying, "Hermione!" hastily. "Wait a second--"

"We've got to get to class," Hermione said, but she reached out automatically to take the magazine Draco handed her. The title was _Witch Weekly_ , and the cover contained an image of a pretty witch with large silver earrings charming a pattern onto wallpaper. "What?"

"Look at it before you go," Draco said, looking stressed and anxious. "I know you hate missing class but you should seriously consider skiving off, it's going to be horrible today - I got Daphne's copy to show you when I saw what Pansy and Nott were passing around--"

"Why are you friends with her, again?" Harry asked while Hermione rifled through the magazine.

"I know she can be nasty," Draco said. "But so can I, and her parents would worry if she started acting sympathetic to the opposition in school."

"That is _so_ messed up," Ron muttered, but Hermione's soft gasp drew their attention. They came closer to read around her.

The article was headed by a picture that must have been taken at Emmeline Vance's funeral. It showed Hermione, in dress robes with Andromeda's scarf wrapped loosely over her curls, helping Sirius down to his seat in the church. She had taken his arm so that he would have her for balance while he gripped his cane with his other hand. He stared solemnly towards the casket at the front of the church, past the camera. Illness had hollowed his cheeks over the summer. He had looked closer to his real age of thirty-five last year at Hogwarts, but in the picture he appeared older and worn again, if much more presentable than just after Azkaban.

The article was titled:

> **Sirius Black's Secret Sweetheart?**
> 
> Sirius Black has topped every list of eligible bachelors in Europe since his exoneration last summer - but he may not be as free-hearted as he seems, writes _Rita Skeeter_. The young Head of the House of Black has infamously refused all comers, throwing at least one witch with a hopeful daughter out of the family seat with the notoriously dangerous Grimmauld Place protective enchantments. Some parties, yours truly among them, have assumed secret negotiations were in place and not to be disrupted.
> 
> But the truth may be more commonplace, even in a family that is hardly common. Lord Black, while too ill to sit in the Wizengamot, attend committee hearings or hear petitions, has been seen several times over the summer accompanying the pretty and vivacious Hermione Granger, very recently 16. Your correspondent received a tip recently that she spent the summer at Lord Black's secret personal residence - and plans to spend her other school holidays there as well. Lord Black's single public appearance since his injury in June took place at the late Emmeline Vance's funeral - and Miss Granger attended on his arm.
> 
> Miss Granger is known to be a close personal friend of Lord Black's godson, the equally famous Harry Potter, so no questions need be asked about how the acquaintance was made. But the absence of marriage bells betrays a deeper question about Miss Granger's suitability: the intelligent and beautiful witch is also a Muggleborn. While Lord Black's policies are the most liberal in the history of that esteemed name, and he recently sanctioned the long past elopement of his cousin to a man sharing Miss Granger's blood status, it's possible that he feels a marriage to such an element in the main line of the notoriously conservative House of Black (motto _Tojours Pur_ ) would be a step too far. 
> 
> If so, it seems that Hermione Granger isn't aware of his reservations - or only harbors hopes of changing his mind. While rumors abound of her involvement with other wizards at school, closer to her age, she made her opinion clear in a recent comment comparing an unknown wizard to her alleged boyfriend, Mr. Weasley, in your correspondent's earshot: "At least he's an adult, and not a childish brat," Miss Granger said, tossing her hair indignantly.
> 
> Is Miss Granger setting out for heartbreak? Will Lord Black forsake legitimate heirs for his teenage paramour? And finally, just what do Miss Granger's muggle parents know about all of this? We can only speculate for now - but time will tell.

There was a horrified silence in the corridor as they finished reading, one at a time. Hermione's face had gone a blotchy, tear-stained pink. Draco was pale and angry, and Ron looked furious.

"It came out over the weekend," Draco said finally. "We'll probably get a letter from the House in the next day or two - Sirius will do _something_ about it - but Skeeter's testing him to see if she can get away with it. She does it to all public figures. Father had her bashed up for it, of course--" He cut himself off at Harry's face. "Look, Sirius has to do something."

"She's - she's made me out as some kind of teenage--" Hermione could not seem to come up with a word to end this sentence.

"It's what she does," Ron said, finding words. "Dad's complained about her before, she tells lies all the time. Nobody who's worth _anything_ believes it--"

"Nobody who isn't will either," Draco said, "They only pretend to because it's fun. But that's bad enough. Come on, Hermione, you should go back to Gryffindor, at least skip Potions."

"I'm not _running away_ ," Hermione said, lifting her chin and striding forward so rapidly the rest of them had to race to catch up.

Potions was horrible.

It would have been even worse with the Snape of years past. There was some consolation in that this new and improved Snape confiscated the Slytherins' magazine after several minutes of whispers and giggles, and halted in his threat to read it aloud once he saw what the contents actually were. But there was a limited amount he could do to prevent Nott, Pansy and Bulstrode from whispering filthy accusations at Hermione under the cover of seventeen students chopping ingredients, or staring at her and giggling when his back was turned.

Worse yet, it appeared that Lavender had read the article before class and was not sure if it was true. She had gotten over her accusations of jealousy last spring, and was generally friendly enough with Hermione, like Parvati, even if they had nothing in common. But this meant that during break she came over to ask Hermione in hushed tones if she was alright or wanted to share anything, gazing suspiciously at Harry. 

Hermione quite obviously would rather have endured more of the taunting; she burst into tears and angrily told Lavender that Rita Skeeter was a filthy liar and the only decent use of Witch Weekly was as a cleaning rag.

"Oo, we shouldn't be surprised," Pansy whispered audibly to Millicent Bulstrode, several tables away. "I heard she didn't get the Prefect badge because she was sleeping around last spring. You know, they don't want her corrupting younger students, the first years might get ideas if they spent too much time around a--"

For once, Harry had to grab Hermione to stop her from drawing her wand, or possibly launching herself across the classroom and trying to pound Pansy's face in. The only bright spot was that after two class periods of this Draco had obviously decided whose need was presently greater; Pansy tried to grab his shoulder on their way out and he spun away from her and told her to stop acting like something unrepeatable.

The article might have come out over the weekend, but it was obvious that other students had shared it in class (or perhaps it was only that they had all been distracted by Hogsmeade, and Hermione usually spent a lot of time alone when out of class, studying or reading or with Harry and Ron.) There were whispers and stares from the moment they entered the Great Hall, and several people looked at Hermione and giggled or leaned over to address friends.

After five or ten minutes of this, Harry had had enough. "Come on," he said to Hermione, "Let's go eat--" He started to say outside, but a glance up at the stormy ceiling changed his mind. "In a classroom or something, we can find somewhere better."

"I don't want people to think I'm hiding," Hermione muttered.

"It won't help," said Harry, who had far too much experience of being the center of attention. "They'll say what they want to no matter what, but they'll get bored, something more interesting will happen."

"I'm sick of this even if you aren't," Ron muttered. There were nearly as many sniggers directed at him as Hermione, presumably because of the article's reference to him as Hermione's alleged boyfriend, and he was starting to resemble a tomato.

"Fine," Hermione hissed, pulled her bag to her shoulder and stalked off in a huff, leaving Harry and Ron to collect food for her. They found an empty classroom to eat in, and Ron and Harry sorely abused Rita Skeeter as creatively as they could manage. Hermione was looking happier by the end of lunch, but then Harry and Ron could only watch her leave for Ancient Runes and hope that her classmates would be kinder next period.

The two of them arrived to Defense after the free period before Hermione, but they were distracted very soon from wondering where she was. In addition to Professor Moody at the front of the room, Madam Dolores Umbridge was present, bustling self-importantly around with her clipboard but not, as far as Harry could tell, doing much of anything.

The bell rang, and Hermione still wasn't there. Harry and Ron shot anxious looks at each other, but Moody was talking before they had a chance to consult.

"Well," he growled. "I think we're about done with dueling and combat spells for now - those of you who'd like a little more, we can always have new people in Dueling Club. Now--"

" _Hem, hem_ ," coughed Umbridge.

Moody had obviously not been expecting an interruption from this quarter. He spun around to face her so fast Harry would not have been surprised if his wand was pointed, but he hadn't even drawn. "Yes?" he growled.

"I was just wondering if you had received my note," Umbridge said.

"Didn't throw you out of my classroom, did I?" Moody growled, then said to the class again, "Anyway, now we're moving on to identifying enemy informants."

The door banged open. Harry jumped, and this time Moody _did_ have his wand in hand. Harry saw him freeze and rapidly slip it away, glancing sidelong towards Umbridge. Umbridge was distracted, however, by the student who had just entered: Hermione.

It was fairly obvious what the cause of her delay had been; she was cradling her bag in her arms, the strap apparently missing, and it had a large patch of the curiously regular and oddly textured fabric created by fixing too large an area with _Reparo_. Her eyes were also red, as though she had been crying again. "Sorry, professor," she whispered, and started towards her seat next to Ron.

"Miss Granger, is it?" Umbridge said, eyebrows crawling up her forehead. "I think--"

"It's my classroom, Umbridge, I'll thank you to sit down and keep your thoughts to yourself," Moody said. Umbridge gasped in shock and opened and closed her mouth furiously, but Moody turned away from both her and Hermione while Hermione pulled her chair out. "Now, we already talked about imposters, and some of you are probably wondering why we're going over the same material again. That's because last time we talked mostly about disguises and impersonators. Today we're going to talk about what you do when you suspect someone's informing on you of their own free will..."

Harry shot an incredulous look at Umbridge to see how she was taking this. She was scribbling furiously on her clipboard, mouth tight with anger.

Moody went on to discuss suspicious questions and behavior, and taught them several methods of detecting if a room had been searched, either - most effectively - by setting silent alarm and tripwire spells beforehand, or after the fact by attempting to detect magic or the presence of other people who had been there, although he pointed out that most spells to do the latter could be protected against.

Umbridge attempted to interject to ask if this was really appropriate subject matter for a class several times. The first time Moody dignified this by pointing out the subject was included in the Ministry-approved textbook, which he had assigned (although they had barely used it), but afterwards merely talked over her with increasing volume and irritation. 

This came to a head at the end of the period when Moody announced that they would be learning about spells for eavesdropping next class period, and how to detect and counter them. Umbridge leapt to her feet. "Professor Moody!" she shrieked in what was probably an attempt to sound intimidating. "I must protest - _completely_ inappropriate material for school children - the Minister will hear about this!"

Moody stared at her, magical eye whizzing in circles, eyebrows slowly creeping up. Then he turned back to the class. "I'll just demonstrate one for you - give you a taste, shall I?" he said, and as Umbridge opened her mouth, he muttered an incantation and gave a twist of his wand. A sort of blue light emanated from the tip, spreading throughout the classroom and then vanishing quickly. In its wake, the door of the Defense teacher's office lit up brilliantly blue.

"And _that_ ," Moody said with apparent satisfaction, "Is what a positive result looks like... Got something to say about this, Madam Umbridge?"

The bell rang just as his sentence finished and Umbridge began to shout. They left in a hurry. "That's not going to be pretty," Ron remarked as the door closed behind them with a bang.

They received two pieces of post Tuesday morning at breakfast, welcome distractions from the muttering and glares. One was from Sirius and addressed to both Harry and Hermione; the other was to Ron, who cracked the seal with a puzzled expression, as his mother rarely or never wrote him at school.

Sirius had read the article, as Draco had predicted, although his words were not exactly reassuring. He echoed Harry in saying that it would blow over soon, as tabloids often made up this sort of thing about the noble houses, and added that he had enclosed a couple of clips from the fifties and sixties to give Hermione an idea. Unfortunately, if he made a statement on the article, or even sued Skeeter for libel, he would be seen as confirming it because he had not deemed it beneath his notice, so there wasn't necessarily much he could do. Unfortunately, intimidating the press was not something he could in conscience arrange.

He added that Hermione should write back and tell him if she was having loads of trouble; Andromeda had suggested they have one of the more friendly reporters - a handful of them were from Black vassal families and should be willing - stop him to ask about it somewhere public so that he could give a dismissive comment without appearing too invested.

"You've got to write," Harry said, reading this over Hermione's shoulder. "You can't go through weeks of this." He remembered his second year all too well, and did not want his friends to experience the same thing.

"I don't want him to think I'm a coward," Hermione said, but after a moment she got parchment out of her bag and started writing.

To Harry's left, Ron made a noise of furious disgust.

"What's wrong? Not Percy again?" Harry asked in an undertone.

"I wish it was," Ron said, and ripped this letter in half - but not before Harry saw the signature.

"Your _mum_?" he said, a hair too loudly; Hermione's head jerked up.

"It's nothing," Ron muttered, ripping the letter into quarters. "Just--"

"Er," Harry said, having a horrible suspicion. "Your Mum doesn't read Witch Weekly, does she?"

"Gets it for the recipes," Ron said darkly, putting the shredded letter onto an empty plate and lighting it on fire with his wand.

"Oh, no," Hermione muttered. "She doesn't believe..."

"She told me to break up with you," Ron said, stirring the ashes with his wand angrily. "And - it doesn't matter, you don't need to hear it. She is - _such_ a--"

What Mrs. Weasley was, they never found out, as Parvati swooped down to shout at Ron for setting a terrible example for the younger students by lighting things on fire at the table. Ron spent a large portion of the Charms lesson writing a long and angry letter back to his mother, who he could not simply ignore the way he could Percy, and was as a result given extra homework when he spectacularly failed to perform the day's spell for Flitwick; but Harry, seeing how relieved Hermione was, could not feel that it was time wasted on his part.

They had time at lunch to go through the clippings Sirius had folded inside his letter to Hermione. In one photograph, a Narcissa who looked around their age smiled prettily at an older wizard who mimed kissing her hand from a distance of several inches away. The headline announced a shocking engagement between the youngest Black daughter and a name that Harry did not know, but which certainly was not Malfoy. 

The second clipping was more disturbing. The article was dated 1956, and in it a girl too young to attend Hogwarts sat on a restaurant patio, leaning against the chest of a young man. Her black curls had been fastened up, but one section had come down, and the man was fixing her hair pins in the photograph while she cuddled, kitten-like, into his shoulder. Neither of their faces were clear in the picture, but the article identified them rapidly: it insinuated that nine year-old Bellatrix Black was behaving suggestively with the Head of the House, Sirius's father Orion.

"That's completely sick," Harry said, rereading the three paragraphs to be sure he had understood the first time.

"No kidding," Ron said, sounding nauseous and hugging Hermione's shoulders from where he stood behind her, squinting at the faded print.

"Well," Hermione said, trying to sound brisk. "That tells us how much the word of society reporters is worth." And she shoved the whole assembly back into her bag.

Harry's scar flared with pain, and he gasped, doubled over the table briefly.

"What?" Hermione said, sounding annoyed. "You can't be surprised I'm just ignoring it--"

"No - scar," he muttered, touching his face.

"What's wrong?" Ron asked, sounding frightened. "Has that been happening a lot?"

"No - just once, back in September after my first lesson with Snape," Harry muttered. His eyes were watering. Slowly, the pain was receding.

"You-Know-Who's not _here_ , is he?" Ron cast a nervous glance up at the staff table where Quirrell had once sat.

"No. He's angry," Harry said. The words seemed to come from far away, from outside him entirely. "Someone's not answering his mail - he's lost one of his servants--"

"What?" Hermione jerked around, staring at him. Harry hoped he had been speaking too softly to be overheard by anyone else.

"Last time he was pleased," he said. "Something good happened, something he wasn't expecting..."

"Harry," Hermione said, sounding nervous. "Have you been practicing Occlumency?"

The word brought the techniques to mind. They had all been totally lost to him in the wake of that searing pain. Slowly, strenuously, Harry brought up the image of the snitch in his mind, and the calm that came with it. The pain receded a little, and he could concentrate more, feeling the wind in his hair and the broom handle in his hands, until it was gone.

"I'd better tell Snape," Harry said, resigned.

He was not looking forward to this conversation and he was right not to. Snape seemed unable to focus on the problem without mocking him for two or three minutes about not practicing adequately, even if he no longer lost his temper completely with Harry. However, Harry did eventually get the reward of yet more reading when he asked Snape _how_ to keep his Occlumency shields up all of the time and not only when he remembered to. Then he was set to working on entering and then leaving Hermione's mind on purpose.

They arrived at Defense Thursday with some anxiety after their last lesson, but Professor Moody was seated alone and apparently unbothered at the head of the class. He laughed when Lavender anxiously asked him about Madam Umbridge. "Well, she wasn't too happy with me, I'm sure you can imagine," he growled. "But they'd have to find a replacement to sack me, and they know I'm only teaching for a year. She went up to complain to Dumbledore, and he heard her out and thanked her and told her he'd consider the information. 

"Now, everyone, I've cast a number of spying spells on this room and I want you all to split up into groups and try to detect them all - you'll be giving me lists at the end of the period..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Liked this? [Find it on tumblr](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/634881636062969856/the-glass-fortress-chpt-11-slander-and), and me!


	13. Voldemort's Triumph

They received a much longer letter from Sirius and Andromeda Friday, this one carried by the larger Arke. 

The whispers had tapered off over the past couple of days, and the letter included an explanation. There was an enclosed news clipping from another gossip magazine, this time about the private lives of the House of Black in general. It included a profile of Andromeda and Ted's twenty-seven year marriage and speculation about whether Narcissa would remarry and who the most likely bachelors were; and more importantly, Sirius was quoted as laughing off the idea he was involved with Hermione.

"I haven't been interested in sixteen year-olds since I was one," he had told the reporter, whose name Harry did not recognize. "Hermione's a good friend of my godson's, and she came to stay with us over the summer because of the situation with Bellatrix's escape from prison. No, the most important person in my life right now outside the family is probably Remus Lupin, he's been helping out with administrative duties since he came to stay with us in August." The article did not come out and actually say that Sirius was gay, but even Harry could pick up the subtext of the next paragraph.

The other interesting part of the letter was the update on the vote count for the Wizengamot. Amelia Bones had swayed another two inherited seats, giving her eighteen, and she had inroads with four or five appointees outside her department via their families, although not all of them could be counted on yet. Therefore they were that much closer to unseating Fudge.

On Sunday, Harry was finishing up his toast at breakfast when Professor Dumbledore arrived at the table, students around them staring. "Harry," he said pleasantly enough, "I wondered if you might be able to step up to my office for a while?"

"Er - sir!" Harry said, surprised and struggling to his feet. "Of course--"

"He is not in any trouble," Dumbledore added to an obviously anxious Hermione and Ron. "Although I hope you can excuse him from any plans you might have, as we may return late." And very shortly Harry was hurrying up the stairs from the Great Hall, trying to keep up with Dumbledore's long legs.

"Sir, you've found something?" he panted, as they passed the gargoyle and entered the spiral staircase.

"I certainly hope so," Dumbledore said. "I would be remiss to imply any certainty at this point, but I have identified further several sites of potential interest to muggle tourists from London in the 1930s, and I shall have to visit them to learn more. This may be a boring day, Harry. I will be showing you how I examine a location for traces of Horcruxes, and if we find anything we shall likely return later when we are more prepared for it - but perhaps not... Ah, here he is," he added, pushing the door open.

Leaning against the desk, examining Fawke's fiery plumage, was Remus.

"Remus!" Harry said, surprised and delighted. He had agreed to Sirius's request to send someone with Dumbledore, but he had not been at all sure who it would be. Sirius was now capable of most normal activity but hardly in shape for combat, and Harry was not certain Narcissa or Druella would be regarded as trustworthy by Sirius or Dumbledore, or that Andromeda would have time.

Remus, turning towards them, smiled ruefully. "I'm glad you're not disappointed," he said. "The family sends their love. How are your classes going?"

"Well, hard," Harry said, "But I think I'm managing okay. Professor Vector says I'm pretty much caught up in Arithmancy now, although I'm not sure I understand all of the lectures anyway."

"Neither did I in O.W.L. year, and I'd taken it for two years before that," Remus said. "I was surprised to hear you'd decided to add it this year - but pleased," he added hastily. "It's a useful subject."

"Unlike Divination?" Harry said.

Remus grinned. "As I have been informed I have so little aptitude as to disrupt others' practice, I won't attempt to judge the discipline... but then I hear you lack it, too. How is Hermione doing? Did the article take the pressure off?"

"Yeah, at least some," Harry said. "Lavender's pretending she never believed it, so at least her dorm's getting along better." Then he glanced at Dumbledore, suddenly aware they were here for a purpose. "Er, sorry, sir."

"Not at all, Harry," Dumbledore said; he was just removing his wand from an ink pot on his desk. "I have been preparing the portkey. Before we set out, I would like to discuss a few guidelines with you both. I am grateful for your assistance, but I am afraid I must be considered rather more experienced in this subject than even you, Remus."

"Of course, Headmaster," Remus said, inclining his head politely.

"Therefore I must require that if you come, you both obey me at once if I should say to be silent, or not to touch something, or even that you should take Harry and run, leaving me behind to die."

Harry opened his mouth to protest this point, but Remus was already saying gravely, "I understand, Headmaster." 

Harry frowned, but nodded after Remus reluctantly. 

"Good. I don't think that will be necessary today, but I wanted to be certain we understood each other. I will primarily be teaching Harry - and Remus, should we encounter anything he does not recognize - the methods I use to scout a location for potential hidden artifacts. I don't believe that Voldemort would have servants at these locations, or any reason to return to them, so we may talk freely; but please be careful what you touch, and what magic you cast. If in doubt, ask first. Now," he offered the ink pot, "If you would both touch this..."

The portkey's sickening, jolting ride delivered them to a gravel path at the base of a high set of sea cliffs. This far into October, the wind coming off the ocean was icy. Harry pulled his cloak tighter around himself, grateful he'd had it with him at breakfast.

"Picturesque," Remus said, looking over the waves. "A very nice vacation spot. I suppose those long black cloaks aren't the best for wading anyway."

"Alas, I am afraid that Tom never had an eye for such things," Dumbledore sighed out, eyes twinkling madly. "The spot I believe may be the one is some distance away; we shall have to walk, in order to have time to identify any protections. Please stay behind me."

They started off along the base of the cliffs. The tide was low at the moment, leaving them plenty of space, but there was debris from the waves up at the very base of the cliff. "They took the orphans down here?" Harry asked. "It seems... dangerous."

"The tide did not come quite so far up to the cliff in the 30s," Dumbledore said, "But I believe that most of the orphans did not reach the water itself on their trips. I am not certain this is the spot, in any case."

"What did you plan to investigate?" Remus asked from a few feet away, having bent to examine a plant growing into the rocky cliff side. 

Harry could not follow much of the discussion he had with Dumbledore for the next few minutes, but eventually he got the gist. Dumbledore had been quickly evaluating sites by visiting and testing for _any_ magic at all, and creating a short list of those locations with traces of something he could not quickly identify as irrelevant. They would travel to an area immediately adjacent to the magic he had detected and then cast a number of detection spells and examine the results, as well as the physical location. Only if they were unable to rule out the site based on that information would they proceed with Curse-Breaking tactics to enter the nexus of magic.

At this point they rounded a curve in the hillside and came upon a shallow, rocky cove. There was an odd hum in the air, and Harry knew at once this was the sight of the magic Dumbledore had detected. He slipped cautiously into magic sight, but could see only blazing power. He still had limited practice at actually analyzing it, as he could only identify magic he had seen since obtaining the ability.

"Now," Dumbledore said, "We shall see."

What followed was a sort of intensive practical lesson in Defense work. It was akin to the lesson Moody had taught on cursed objects earlier in the term, but using much more obscure and specific spellwork on an immensely more complicated and much larger subject. Harry was not capable of performing every spell Dumbledore and Remus demonstrated to him, but he found use for it all anyway, as he could see which parts of the spellwork responded to them.

In the end, they spent an hour testing the site for everything from the shedding of unicorn blood to the presence of a murder victim's body parts, before Dumbledore declared, with some resignation, that this was not what they had sought. The magic here was much older, most likely the traces of rituals performed before the coming of Christianity to Britain; it had only been so strong that they had all been temporarily fooled into thinking it more recent by the power left.

"Is that all, sir?" Harry said, slightly disappointed, although he was exhausted by the spells he had performed already.

"For the moment. If you feel quite well enough, we may investigate one other site today; but I think a break, first... and perhaps some lunch. There is a village at the top of the cliff side, if you will agree to accompany me there, Remus, Harry?"

What followed was easily the most bizarre meal Harry remembered. Remus had come wearing muggle clothing, and Harry always wore it under his robes, so he only had to take them off; but he still had a thick black woolen cloak instead of a coat. Dumbledore transfigured his robes into trousers and a jacket, but as they entered the village people stared anyway, and Harry could see why: he had left the brilliant purple color and the pattern of multicolored aubergines, although he sternly told it to be still and stop undulating before they reached the muggles.

Dumbledore and Remus appeared totally oblivious to this, and Harry worked to match them as they strolled up to the village pub's bar to order food. They sat in one of the three tiny tables, the one furthest from the entrance, and Dumbledore gave a tiny flick of his wand, concealed by his hand. "Ah, privacy," he said. "Well, Harry, what did you think of our morning?"

Away from the potentially dangerous magic, they talked about the spellwork while Harry went through his chips. Whatever he had felt about Dumbledore in recent weeks, he found that he and Remus together made entertaining dining companions, getting into absurd side tracks about potential applications of the spells they had been using and stories about past misadventures.

Eventually the conversation moved to the sites Dumbledore was investigating, which Remus had not heard as much about. "Speaking of which, Harry," Dumbledore added when explaining the papers he had back at Hogwarts, "I understand you're newly acquainted with Adrian Pucey?"

"Er, yeah," Harry said, startled. "Why?"

"I don't suggest you ask him now, but if you should deem him trustworthy - and willing to help - it happens that the Borgin family are long time vassals of the Puceys; his family provided the capital necessary to purchase the shop in Knockturn Alley. If you think you should be in a position to ask if he would allow you - or me - a look at their old papers, without giving any information away, it would be helpful of you."

"I'll ask - I mean, if I think I can," Harry said, thoughtfully. "I don't think we're really, er, that sort of friends now."

"Of course," Dumbledore said amiably. "Now, there is another manner I wanted to speak to you about, while we have time to linger. On the subject of the Defense curse and your efforts to break it last term..."

Harry sat upright, startled. He had nearly forgotten about it over the summer. "Yeah, have you managed to get into the room?" he said excitedly.

"Unfortunately, I have not. Whatever conditions the room opens to are enforced by the castle's enchantments, and I was able to determine that forcing the issue might well rip the corridor apart without actually allowing us in. However, I had hopes that we might access the room through your abilities, or at least investigate how Voldemort was able to interfere with the castle, if you are willing to assist me?"

"Yeah, of course," Harry said, excited. "When we go back?"

"I am afraid that my time is limited, and we will likely use all of it on this search. However, if you are willing, I will let you know when we have time to pursue the issue again. Now, if you are nearly finished...?"

When they were done with lunch, the three of them proceeded to another seaside location, this time with nearly white cliffs that ended directly in the water and a path at the top. This time it did not take so long for Dumbledore to declare that it was not the correct spot. The magic was coming from the ruins of a small shack, about a century old, and they concluded that it was the ruin of a laboratory used in the breeding of Dark creatures. But, mind on the issue of the castle's enchantments and the Defense curse, Harry was not nearly as disappointed.

Harry was traveling down a long, dusty corridor filled with cloths draped over odd shapes. Windows at odd intervals let in sunlight, enough to throw pieces of the hall into disorienting focus. He stood in each patch of sunlight, gasping for breath, steeling himself before dashing to the next. 

Something was following him in the hallway. He could hear it stalking him, fluttering from obstacle to obstacle. He felt it prickle the back of his neck. He forced himself not to look back. He knew it would be right there. He could only dash faster and faster, throwing the dust cloth-covered furniture aside, fighting to reach the edge of the hall.

He tripped, finally, and lay sprawled on his back. The stuffed vulture craned over him, looking into his face with its lifeless eyes...

With a gasp, Harry bolted upright and saw only the crimson hangings of his bed, lit faintly from behind.

It had been a dream - just a dream. 

Not even his scar hurt. Not that it seemed likely that Voldemort, wherever he was, was currently being stalked by the stuffed vulture Harry now recalled normally sat atop Neville's grandmother's hat.

Harry heard a moan from the direction of Neville's bed.

He frowned and checked his watch - two in the morning - and then pushed the hangings aside. The dorm was silent and quiet, only faint light coming in through the window. He slipped out of bed in his bare feet and went to Neville's.

"Neville?" he called through the hangings. "You alright?"

There was an answering moan, and then Neville said, sounding groggy, "Harry?"

"You sounded like you were having a nightmare," Harry said.

Neville pushed the hangings aside. He was flushed and sweaty, but his eyes were clearing. "Yeah," he said, rubbing his face. "Thanks, Harry - sorry I woke you up..."

"What were you, er, dreaming about?" Harry asked, feeling a certain sense of dread that had nothing to do with the specific dream. "D'you want to tell me, I mean?"

"Er - you know I live with Gran, right? Loads of the house is shut up, it's just the two of us and she doesn't want to bother with heating the whole thing, so there were all these closed off bits. I'd explore them and sometimes get lost and end up scared when I was a kid..." Neville shrugged. "Silly, really, but when you're dreaming..."

"Yeah, of course," Harry said, resisting the urge to say that Neville hadn't told him about the vulture. "Er, I hope you sleep better."

"Thanks, Harry. Goodnight," Neville said, reaching for a book on his nightstand about gardening.

Harry slipped back to his bed and closed the hangings, but he did not go back to sleep. Instead, he lit his wand and frowned at his hands. Snape had warned him that normal Legilimens often slipped into others' minds by accident, and in a way accomplishing that had been their goal, so that Harry would stop slipping first into Voldemort's mind instead. 

The actual experience of doing it did not make Harry particularly happy.

Harry was unable to get back to sleep, and as a result was foggy and exhausted on the way down to breakfast. The day did not improve from there. A Howler arrived at their table, startling the visiting Hedwig into knocking Harry's goblet of pumpkin juice over. It proved to be destined for Ron, and any hope that Harry had had that the issue of Rita Skeeter slandering Hermione was concluded was lost as Mrs. Weasley railed at Ron for dating a girl of questionable morals. Hermione slipped off from the table in tears halfway through, and Harry, torn sorely between them, went after her, telling a miserable Ron to follow as soon as he could.

Harry found Hermione in the nearest courtyard, crying into her bag while Crookshanks furiously attempted to groom her bushy hair. "She _liked_ me," Hermione said, muffled. "I thought she did - we visited at their house loads of times--"

"I'm sorry," Harry said, unable to come up with anything else that might help.

To his surprise, the courtyard door opened and admitted not yet Ron, but Fred.

"Hermione alright?" he called, and when Harry waved, came over. "Sorry Mum's a prat. Ron's coming when the Howler's done. Want us to send her some mislabeled samples?"

"She wouldn't be stupid enough to eat anything you sent her," Hermione said, sniffling, but when she raised her head she was smiling weakly.

"We'll get Ginny to send them," Fred said at once. "She can claim she wants help with magical baking, Mum'll love that - she might even believe Ginny just messed it up horribly when she comes out in boils--"

Arguing about whether or not this would fix anything gradually restored Hermione to exasperated disapproval instead of tears, particularly when Ron arrived with both George and Ginny. Ginny promptly volunteered to slip something into a pumpkin cookie recipe her mother had been hassling her to master all summer before Fred had a chance to suggest anything.

But whispering and staring had resumed, this time targeted at Ron as much as Hermione. When they had survived their first two classes Harry went to get food from the table so that all three of them could eat in peace in the courtyard under the rain shield Hermione had asked Professor Sinistra to teach her. It was strange, Harry mused, to be the one who was left alone by other students for a change, but he couldn't bring himself to be grateful that Ron and Hermione were miserable instead.

If there was one consolation, it was that a distraction was coming up for the student body in the form of the first Quidditch match of the season. With Gryffindor and Slytherin playing each other after a full year with no Quidditch, the usual turmoil and harassment had stepped up a notch. Harry was used to it after several years, but Ron had never been on the team before, and was badly shaken when Alicia Spinnet ended up in the hospital wing after Slytherin Keeper Bletchley hexed her in front of fourteen witnesses.

Things were also awkward for Draco, who had been firmly at the center of Slytherin when he last played in third year. There had been little or no chance he would be dropped from the team when Harry was the only Seeker he had lost to more than once; but he had come under a certain amount of suspicion for his friendship with Hermione and Harry for exactly that reason. 

"Still," Harry said, watching Hermione mend Draco's bag in Arithmancy, "We only play each other once a year, so it should drop off after Saturday."

"It had better, or I'm going to have to beg your godfather to send me new things," Draco muttered. "Things were so much easier when..." He dropped off, glancing at Hermione.

"When your father would blackmail anyone who said a word wrong to you? Yes, I imagine they were," Hermione said, and added, "I looked this one up after someone went after my bag a few weeks ago, it mends fabric. _Texe_. Let me see your cloak where they got it, too."

"That's a N.E.W.T. spell," Daphne Greengrass said, leaning over with interest.

"Yes, well." Hermione flushed. "Most of the lower level fabric repair ones don't last very long."

"Let me see your cloak when she's done with it," Daphne ordered Draco, who tried to hide a smile.

"I told you about her," he said to Daphne, passing his cloak over. Then Professor Vector called them all to order.

The Halloween feast Tuesday night provided some distraction. Harry's Legilimency lesson had been rescheduled to Monday by a displeased Snape, to his relief, as it meant he would be able to enjoy the feast. While he had been having more success, he was often left with a splitting migraine after these sessions, and depending on how he had done Ron or Hermione might be left in pain as well, something Harry felt increasingly guilty about.

Charms that day was pleasantly chaotic. Flitwick took his upper level students down to the Great Hall to help with decorating for the feast, so they spent their first class period conjuring cobwebs and creating heatless multi colored flames atop candles and inside jack-o-lanterns. Ron seemed to completely forget about the upcoming match, particularly when Hermione asked him to give her a boost up so that she could reach the second story of windows. 

But in Transfiguration, Harry found himself unable to focus, and his mental state only got worse as time went on. He wondered if it was the match getting to him after all - he had never had such a long break from playing before - or if it was an after effect of his session with Snape last night. Then again, considering the events of the previous four Halloweens, he might only be affected by the day itself.

They were heading down to lunch when Harry stumbled on the stairs. He felt Ron's hand close around his upper arm, stopping him from falling, but the next moment his awareness was overtaken by a blazing pain in his forehead. One emotion surged in him, so incongruous he initially couldn't identify it: triumph.

"Harry, your Occlumency!" Hermione hissed in his ear. He seized that thought as hard as he could, thought of diving - falling - he'd nearly fallen on the stairs and broken his neck - no, the Snitch ahead of him, his broom under him, the wind in his robes, the crowd cheering....

His vision slowly cleared. The stairs were emptying as students reached the Great Hall for lunch. Ron and Hermione were there, and a few other classmates who had been on the way down with them: Neville was looking worried, and Lavender and Dean exchanging nervous looks.

"--Sorry, guys, I'm alright," he gasped. "Headache - think I'll go to the hospital wing--"

"We'll come with you," Ron said, looking at Hermione worriedly. Harry waited until they were out of earshot of the others to say, "It was Voldemort. He's really pleased, something's gone well. I think--" The words came without any conscious recollection, "I think he's just had someone killed."

Hermione was looking half-worried, half disapproving. Harry swallowed. "I'm using my Occlumency shielding now," he said. "I'll try not to look. I don't think I can take the Great Hall right now, though." The noise would be nearly as bad as having to wonder and not discuss what he had just felt.

"I'll get food this time, you two find somewhere to sit," Hermione said. 

Despite themselves, and despite Hermione's disapproval - directed as much at herself as them - they were unable to avoid speculation; but they didn't really know enough to make any good guesses. There were any number of people who Voldemort might have wanted to kill. Harry was relieved to hear that Dumbledore had been at the staff table as usual when Hermione was in the Great Hall to gather up food for them; and while he could not verify Sirius was safe, there was not much good in doing anything, since if anything had happened to his family he would probably be removed from class to hear far before the response to a letter would come.

They went on to Care of Magical Creatures after lunch, still held indoors in response to the driving rains that had lasted for weeks, and from there they joined the Hufflepuffs in dashing down the mud-logged path to the greenhouses. They had only been working at chasing down their mobile shrubs to prune them for about ten minutes when Professor Dumbledore came to the door, face grave. Harry's heart leapt into his throat.

"Miss Abbott?" Dumbledore said, voice unusually soft and gentle. "Please come with me for a moment. Bring your bag."

Harry, Ron and Hermione exchanged horrified looks. They didn't find out the details immediately, as Hannah did not return to class. Susan Bones came to meet them coming down for the feast, as they were connected by her aunt's political campaign, and gave them the news. Hannah's mother Angharad Abbott, who Harry had met last Easter, had been murdered.

"So she's an orphan now," Susan said heavily. The four of them had sat down at the end of Gryffindor table, where they could be obscured from the rest of the table's view by shifting a giant carved pumpkin. "Her father died when she was just a baby, he was killed the last year of the war."

"That's horrible," Harry said. "Is she coming back to school?"

"Yeah, she's supposed to be back after the weekend, they want her home for the funeral," Susan said. "I helped her pack after class was over. Merlin, what a mess." She leaned forward, pressing her finger tips to her temples.

"Do you know why - I mean, what her mother was killed for?" Hermione asked, tentatively.

"Probably us," Susan said miserably. "Her mum's - okay, I forgot you three aren't used to helping with this, but Angharad Abbott was Head of her House, Hannah's father was married under a contract that left his children as Abbotts because of it. 

"But the Abbotts are a fairly large family and the liberal members took heavy losses last war. Hannah's great uncle - her grandmother's little brother, the Abbott family's been passed through women for two generations - is a blood apologist, you know, the "I don't condone the Dark Lord's methods but you have to admit his supporters had cause" type."

"Will he inherit with Hannah a minor?" asked Hermione, who seemed to have instantly grasped the ramifications.

"It's supposed to be Hannah - she's an only child - and by default it will be," Susan said. "But the Abbotts are an old enough family to have dueling formally enshrined in family law as a legal method of challenging leadership--"

"Is Hannah going to be _okay?_ " Ron asked. "If she went home for the funeral--"

"I doubt anyone will disrupt the funeral proceedings," Susan said. "But after that, I don't know. I hope she stays at Hogwarts for Christmas. I'm not sure if they can challenge her anyway and win automatically if she doesn't come home, but that would be better than dying."

"Dying?" Hermione said, appalled. "I thought dueling was illegal!"

"Andromeda mentioned it over the summer, remember?" Harry said.

"It's illegal, but it's a sort of squishy law," Susan said. "Aunt Amelia's arrested people for it, but she has to be careful not to hack off the other noble houses too badly if she wants to keep her job. And it doesn't matter to internal House law if the Ministry says it's illegal, the Houses with magical recognition of the head can force the winner into place anyway. Even if Hannah's Uncle Radulph goes to prison for murdering her in a duel, he can dictate who his Wizengamot proxy is from there fine as long as there are other family members around who listen to him."

"So you think this was meant to stop your aunt from replacing Fudge?" Harry asked.

Susan hesitated, then nodded. "It's hard to say what else it could be," she said. "Angharad Abbott's not involved in anything else controversial right now. And it's going to scare the other Heads supporting Aunt Amelia, I bet she loses seats she thought were secure, at least until she can talk them down." She sighed. "I bet that's why they picked her - that, and the Abbotts have branches on both sides of politics, so the inheritance being called into question would really throw their vote into question. If they'd killed, I don't know, Musica Carrow, it would be hard to tell what issue it was over."

"Musica's a female name, too, right?" Hermione asked, lips pursed.

Susan looked up from her hands and blinked. "Yes. Women can sit in the Wizengamot."

"Oh, I know, I just thought - that's quite a few, especially with everything else I've learned recently. I noticed over the summer with Andromeda, but I kept finding something else to ask first."

"Well, it's mostly because of the war," Susan said. "A lot more pureblood men died or went to prison than women, so there were a lot of female heiresses taking seats for the first time in the eighties." She sighed. "I should write to Aunt Amelia - you two should write to Sirius and Andromeda, too. I'm sure they'll all hear this, but..."

"Yeah, we will when we get back up to Gryffindor," Harry said. They all left the feast early; the decorations they had helped Flitwick with earlier did not have the same appeal as in the morning.

The fifth years who had classes with Hannah were subdued the rest of the week in spite of the oncoming Quidditch match. There was only mild interest in Dumbledore's announcement that the first round of inspections had concluded, and they would hear the Ministry's thoughts on the current Hogwarts staff at the end of next week. Hermione had buried herself in a new research project to cope with the lingering stares. From a conversation she had with Dean at breakfast Harry and Ron gathered that she was working on her idea for integrating computer modeling with prophetic divination, although neither of them were able to understand much more than that.

Harry felt mildly bad for Ron, who had always been envious of the attention Harry attracted without trying, but given his awkwardness in public and the recent scandal over his girlfriend it might have been just as well that their year was distracted before his first game. Then Harry thought about what they had all been distracted by, and felt horrible all over again.

The first Saturday in November was bright and clear, a marked improvement over the weeks of rain. Ron was dead silent at breakfast and faintly green; Harry never ate much before a match, but pestered Ron into at least drinking some pumpkin juice and having a few bites of toast before they were off to the pitch. As Angelina shook hands with Montague, Harry wondered whether the new Slytherin Captain would be more or less fond of fouls than Flint. The scuffles in the last week suggested that he was at least no less prone to dubious tactics.

Then they were kicking off, and Harry had time only for a vague hope that Ron would hold up well to Wood's legacy as Keeper before he had to devote his attention to the Snitch. This was his first game playing Draco since they had been on civil terms, and he hoped that that would make the game more fun - particularly if Draco was less inclined to foul him - instead of creating problems when one of them had lost to the other. He circled over the game, eyes searching, and noted only absently that the Quaffle was in play near the Gryffindor goals...

He heard Lee Jordan announce that Slytherin had scored and winced heavily, but a few minutes later Gryffindor was cheering a save, so Ron wasn't doing too badly. Harry had never before quite appreciated how being a Seeker limited his number of chances to screw up badly in public. Then the Quaffle was back towards the Slytherin end...

Impulsively Harry dived through the hoops. The Slytherin Keeper would also be new, and might be easily distracted, and the Seeker was allowed anywhere on the pitch, he wouldn't be fouling anyone unless he actually clipped them. Bletchley swore at him, and Harry grinned, seeing Draco spiral lazily down, obviously confident Harry had been feinting. Harry swerved and dove suddenly, trying to get Draco to chase him down, but Draco did not bite. He seemed confident again, back in the air. Harry spared half a thought wondering if Slytherin's need for a decent Quidditch standing was part of his better position in his house compared to last year.

Slytherin scored one more time, and Ron was looking dejected when Harry circled around that direction, searching for the Snitch. Angelina was in possession of the Quaffle, so perhaps Gryffindor would make up for it soon. Harry was turning, trying to spot Draco, when he saw a glimmer of gold near Madam Hooch.

Draco was nearer to both the Snitch and the referee, and Harry held his breath as he wheeled about to dive. Draco spotted him belatedly, but he was rising and facing the other direction; the need to turn cost him and Harry's broom was faster. Harry closed in on the Snitch and caught it just as Draco pulled alongside his broom.


	14. The Hogwarts Library

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One line here is adapted from OotP chapter nine.

The end of Gryffindor's first match brought a sudden expansion of free time for Harry and Ron. Sunset now arrived far too early for week night Quidditch practice, and as Gryffindor would not play again until March anyway, Angelina had agreed to limit practice to their usual Saturday slot once per week. As Slytherin had been brow-beaten into taking the same agreement, Saturday morning and all of Sunday was available to Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, preparing for their own opening match.

Hannah Abbott's return to school Monday reminded them of concerns aside from schoolwork. She arrived during breakfast, apparently just returned to the castle, and went to sit down with eyes reddened from crying. While they did not often see the Hufflepuffs during class, Hannah was subdued in Herbology Tuesday. Susan Bones stuck by her side, glaring viciously at anyone who looked at Hannah in a way she didn't like.

But Harry was distracted from even the question of Voldemort's activities. His unintentional sharing of Neville's dream had not been an isolated occurrence. Several times in the past fortnight he had slipped into other dreams that did not seem to be the product of his own mind, although he was only able to confirm this once. That time, he entered a dream of Hermione's where she determinedly climbed a table as a very small child, accompanied by two elderly cats who spoke to her in what Hermione identified, awake and blushing, as quotes from _Alice in Wonderland_.

Because the dreams had not been enough, in the week following the first Quidditch match Harry began to hear thoughts while awake. When this was only a matter of Seamus Finnegan's opinion of the mashed potatoes at dinner, this was untroubling. But Lavender and Parvati giggling over a recent Divination practical was bad enough without having to actually hear their excited, scattered memories of a class that seemed to bear no relation to Harry's own experience, and when their conversations turned to boys it was still worse.

These developments were unsettling but could have been ignored. They were, after all, what Snape had been aiming for, and there was reason to believe this goal had been well chosen. While Harry's scar flared a few times in the week after Angharad Abbott's murder, he was always able to focus again on the room around him quickly, and he experienced only vague snatches of emotions. Voldemort's mind had no more of a hold on him than any of the other thoughts he inadvertently listened to now, and as Voldemort was a great deal further away, he generally perceived less before he managed to refocus. 

But it was not only acquaintances and distant friends Harry was reading the minds of. It was also Ron and Hermione, who were by his side more often than anyone else.

He would have thought, if asked before actually experiencing it, that reading his best friends' minds would have been less awkward. After all, the three of them had always shared nearly everything with each other. It was true that much of what he heard was unsurprising, and snatches of Hermione reading or Ron during a chess game could be rather enjoyable, allowing him to get a glimpse of things he did not really understand. Since Ron and Hermione knew it was happening and why, he also felt less guilty about this than he did about using Legilimency on other people. 

On the other hand, the first time he was sucked into Ron anxiously worrying Hermione wanted someone else more than him, simply because Hermione had laughed at something Draco said at lunch, he was pulled under into a dizzying spiral of anger, jealous frustration, and insecurity that took him several minutes to throw off. Hermione's raging fury when Ron said something insensitive was worse; he had had no idea how violent her anger was under her habitual exasperated sniffs and sarcastic jibes. 

In fact, Harry was starting to worry about whether his best friends were actually friends, let alone whether they should be dating. The occasional flares of happiness Ron felt when Hermione beamed at him, and what he could only really describe as passion from Hermione and tried to hear as little of as possible, did not seem worth how unhappy they made each other at regular intervals. His awkwardness with Cho was nowhere near as frequent or as bad, and while he had anxiously wondered about what he would hear from her, there was nothing of the kind; her bouts of insecurity were rather lower key and limited in time span compared to Ron's. 

(Harry had, after an argument with Snape on the subject, pulled Cho aside and told her about the whole thing so that she would know it was happening. He had asked nervously if she wanted him to stay away from her until he could get it under control, as that might well be months, but fortunately she had not taken him up on this. She had only asked him to tell her whenever it happened.)

He knew from Sirius's letters that Druella was trying to feel Hermione out about Ron in letters, but he had no idea how it was going, as Hermione had not admitted to it. Even if Sirius would have told him Harry was loathe to pry. He was already hearing far more than he wanted to about Ron and Hermione's relationship.

He attempted to talk to Ron about it over their Monday free period while Hermione was in Ancient Runes, but Ron's flaring jealousy put an end to it. It was immediately unpleasantly obvious to Harry that Ron half-believed he and Hermione had been sneaking around behind his back for ages. This was not so much because of anything they had actually done, but the result of a lifetime of watching his brothers get anything he particularly wanted, and a sneaking suspicion that no girl would really prefer Ron when Harry was right there, famous and better at everything. Harry repressed the urge to throttle Ron, or snarl that he was not better at _anything_ except perhaps flying, and returned to his homework, letting the conversation die.

He tried to talk to Hermione Wednesday during the break between their double Arithmancy periods. It at least did not go as poorly as Ron. Hermione was baffled and then dismissive when Harry brought up the idea that she should perhaps not feel blinding rage every time she spoke to her boyfriend, saying that she was sure everyone felt that way occasionally and ignoring Harry's protests that no, they really didn't. Then she turned the subject to Cho, something Harry was only now realizing she did on purpose when she wanted to distract him.

"Hermione should have been in Slytherin," he said in disgust to Draco later while she went up to ask Professor Vector her usual fifteen questions after the lesson.

"Probably, but she'd have had a miserable time of it," Draco said. "We were all horrible in first year."

"Speak for yourself, I was an angel," Daphne said beside them, flicking a imaginary speck of dust off her sleeve. 

"You were not," Tracey said. "You threatened to use the Curse of Unending Night on Theo because he interrupted you reading too many times."

"I couldn't have _done_ it!" Daphne protested. "I was _eleven_."

"He didn't know that," Draco said, pleased to rag on someone else instead. "You specifically told him your mother taught it to you. You went on for ages about the effects--"

"He called Tracey a mudblood, I was angry and wanted to punish him," Daphne said as though this was perfectly normal, although Harry caught a flicker of amusement from her thoughts and knew she was enjoying herself. "I just didn't want to make it obvious _why_."

"Being mixed blood in Slytherin is bad enough," Tracey said, rolling her eyes. "Someone go get Hermione, we're all going to be late for lunch."

On Wednesday Harry received another note from Dumbledore. Unusually, this one requested Ron and Hermione come with him to his office at eight o'clock. Harry wondered whether this meant that they were about to try to use Harry's abilities with the wards, or if it was something completely unrelated. Unusually, the three of them had not had occasion to break any major school rules recently, so he could not see what else they would be summoned together for.

When the three of them arrived at the Headmaster's office, they discovered that they had not been summoned alone. Fifteen or so other students were gathered around Dumbledore's large office, now as packed with people as with strange objects. Madam Pince was also present, looking profoundly unhappy, although there were no adults besides her and the Headmaster. Harry spotted Fred and George Weasley along with their friend Lee Jordan examining one of the spindly silver instruments with great curiosity. Susan Bones was there, as were Parvati, Padma and Anthony Goldstein, from Ravenclaw. 

Cho was present, though not her friend Marietta, and came over quickly to greet Harry. There were several more sixth and seventh year students Harry did not know, although they included Adrian Pucey, who he had continued to partner with most of the time in dueling club. Adrian waved, but continued his examination of Dumbledore's Pensieve.

"Thank you, everyone," Dumbledore said a few minutes later, when one or two stragglers had entered. "I believe this is all who were invited. If I could have your attention, Misters Weasley...?"

Fred and George reluctantly turned to face the headmaster.

"Now," Dumbledore said, "Everyone will recall that the inspectors' preliminary results were given last Friday." 

Harry nodded with the rest. Professors Trelawney and Binns had been put on probation, greatly distressing Lavender and Parvati, although no one was anything but celebratory about Binns. Hagrid had apparently not been singled out, although Harry had overheard Professor McGonagall thinking that it had been close, and Madam Marchbanks had had to overrule Umbridge on that subject. Apparently Moody had forestalled any problems by telling his old colleagues at Magical Law Enforcement about the illegal spying spells Umbridge had used on his office. Harry, Ron and Hermione had gone down to visit Hagrid last weekend and celebrate the end of the inspections of teaching staff, and had made extra efforts in pretending to eat his rock cakes. 

"You were told about the staff evaluations, but there were some additional remarks made only to staff," Dumbledore went on. "Before I continue, I must pause and ask for your complete cooperation _and secrecy_ in this matter." 

While the group had been paying attention, this abruptly halted the normal sounds of shuffling and fidgeting that normally occurred in any large group. George gaped at Dumbledore, who smiled affably back at him. 

"If anyone is not comfortable with this, I understand completely, and you may be free to leave now," Dumbledore went on. "For those of you who are too curious to resist, I will have to ask you to sign this agreement." He took out a roll of parchment with a flourish and placed it on his desk. "You will be agreeing not to discuss the subject of this meeting with anyone outside this group. There is no automatic penalty, save that I will immediately be aware of anyone who breaks it. But if you agree, you would be well-advised to abide by that agreement. I do not insist you agree to aid us, but if you leave after this point, you must keep the matter secret." 

Dumbledore was no longer amiable and twinkling, but grave-faced as he took out a quill and ink. "I am sorry to lay this burden upon you, but it is necessary not to implicate the staff in the matter, and in any case it is nearly always true that students know much more of what goes on in the castle than us - and so your expertise as explorers, experimenters, creative thinkers and even troublemakers is required. I will give you a few minutes to think," he said, and folded his hands on his desk.

Glances were exchanged. Harry, Ron and Hermione immediately got up to sign the paper. Whatever misgivings Harry had had about Dumbledore lately, he did not think Dumbledore would really harm him. In any case he was too curious to resist, just as Dumbledore had insinuated. The parchment had a scant two lines of text reiterating what Dumbledore had already said, and a lot of space for signatures; Harry took the quill from Hermione and signed, feeling somewhat self conscious about his untidy scrawl.

It took ten or fifteen minutes of chatter, thoughtful faces and movement, but eventually every student present signed the paper. Dumbledore said only, "Excellent," as he rolled it up and placed it away in his desk.

"Now," he said to them, standing again, "The matter at hand. While the inspectors found the staff generally suitable, they did not feel so quiescent about certain other matters. Most of the issues at hand are trivial - I am afraid that you will all be forced to obey an earlier curfew this spring--"

There was some muttering at this, but it rapidly quieted when Dumbledore raised his hands.

"--But not all. One of the chief items of discord happens to be the contents of the Hogwarts library."

Madam Pince's presence was suddenly explained. There was a lot more muttering at this, and Hermione was not the only one who shrieked or hissed indignantly.

Dumbledore smiled. "Quite. The Ministry wishes to eliminate the Restricted section via a general purge which would remove the most offensive contents from both it and the rest of the library. It would leave, in addition to those they generally approved, a limited number of books accessible only to N.E.W.T. students, and a slightly larger number available only to third years and up. Now, they claim that they would be willing to allow a separate research library for staff and would release the confiscated titles once arrangements were made--"

"You don't _believe_ that, sir?" said a seventh year Slytherin who Harry did not recognize. She flushed as all eyes turned toward her.

"Indeed, Miss Selwyn," Dumbledore said, nodding to her. "It is well known that those books unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of the Ministry's Department of Redaction rarely emerge again, and almost never with the number of pages they started with. However, as Headmaster I am answerable to the Ministry and I cannot directly refuse. 

"The Wizengamot is at this moment writing a bill to prevent the Ministry from interfering with the Hogwarts library, and preserve the traditional exception allowing the castle to possess proscribed works - you may discuss this with others, it is public knowledge. The bill will likely take some months to pass, but I anticipate that it will. What we require, therefore, is not permanent evasion but time. Preferably, time in which the library remains accessible to those in need," he concluded; then nodded once, and sat, apparently to allow them discussion time.

They were a little slow to start in the presence of both the Headmaster and the intimidating Madam Pince, but Dumbledore was content to wait. Eventually Fred and George began hesitantly to list secret passages in the castle, and several other students added hidden entrances to rooms they were aware of. Dumbledore made no comment on these possibilities, but conjured a blackboard and a piece of chalk which took notes on their ideas by itself.

Harry, Ron and Hermione mostly listened, as a majority of the areas they were aware of had been listed by the twins anyway, but eventually Harry stood up. "Look," he said, clearing his throat nervously, and was unnerved by how easily he achieved silence. "A lot of these are great ideas on their own, but - how many people know about them? Where did you find out? The passage to the Shrieking Shack was built intentionally as - part of accommodations for a student in the seventies--" 

Dumbledore nodded, smiling. 

"So it has to be on official record somewhere, right, sir?" 

Dumbledore nodded again.

"So the Ministry could probably find out about it. And even if Professor Dumbledore tells them that he got rid of the books they didn't like ahead of time - sorry, sir, but they're not going to believe that when we keep citing banned books. Maybe one or two students would have access to their own copies, but not the whole school. 

"So we need to assume that there's going to be a search for a secret library within a few weeks, or months, and we have to make sure our hiding place can stand up to that," Harry finished, feeling somewhat lame, but to his surprise students were nodding, and several of the seventh years who had appeared skeptical when he stood up were now looking thoughtful.

"So the giant chess board behind the tapestry of the unicorn hunt is probably out, all you have to do is push aside the right section," Lee Jordan called. The chalk struck off his own suggestion from the list. Other people hesitantly added information about where they had heard about their own ideas, or their knowledge of other people's. 

Perhaps half of the ideas on the list seemed to be well known, if only in gossip, and another quarter were probably known at least to the Ministry. The remaining were mostly unsuitable for other reasons, such as space or inaccessible entrances.

There they hit a stalemate, circling around with ideas that were no better than the previous ones. Adrian Pucey suggested that they try adding protections to one of the more suitable but too well known options, and Ron added after that that they could try to modify one of the unsuitable ones if it was secret enough. They tossed around ideas to do one or the other for a while, but did not come up with a really foolproof sounding plan. 

Finally Hermione said, "You know who would probably have a better idea?"

The group looked at her, surprised.

"The house elves," she said. One of the sixth years sniggered, but Hermione ignored him and went on, "They clean the whole castle, and they can get into all kinds of areas we can't, or not easily. And most of their families have spent their whole lives here for centuries. They must know all kinds of things humans don't about Hogwarts, because no one ever _talks_ to a house elf, do they?"

"An admirable thought, Miss Granger," Dumbledore said. "I shall call one--"

"No," Hermione said, and flushed; but Dumbledore inclined his head to her and she went on, "If you call one here - into a group, to be questioned by the Headmaster - it's going to be nervous, isn't it? It might think it's in trouble, or that we're prying into secrets that might get one of them hurt. It would be better if someone went individually - or only a few people - so that it seemed casual, and we could explain before it had a chance to get upset..."

"Well reasoned," Dumbledore said. "If the group does not object I will allow you - and perhaps Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley - to do so, and report back?"

There was some mumbling and nodding; no one objected in the end, so Dumbledore said that he would anticipate a possible breach in the agreement and reassured everyone - or warned them - that he would still know about any additional breaches committed later. There were several other groups of students who undertook assignments as well, including investigating secrecy agreements in more detail and designing various options for how students would actually be able to use the secret library. Dumbledore recorded them all; then he dismissed them, saying that he would call everyone to meet again at another time.

It wasn't yet curfew, so the three of them went all the way down to the kitchens when the meeting broke up. Hermione was thoughtful and distracted when they tried to engage her in conversation; she told them irritably after a few hallways to let her think about how to phrase their question. Ron and Harry exchanged glances but left her alone after that.

At last they came to the fruit portrait and tickled the pear to gain entrance. The house elves were working on preparations for tomorrow at the moment, and there were fewer around than there would be earlier in the evening. One elf, whose tea towel was embroidered at the edges with a floral pattern, was overseeing a number of immense bowls of dough, apparently using magic to make them rise, while others filled condiment jars, washed dishes or set meats to marinate.

"Students!" the first elf Harry had noticed said, turning to them. "Would Miss and Misters want to bring a snack up?"

Hermione hesitated, and Harry was sure she was about to refuse, but he had a sudden sense that it was a bad idea; they wanted the house elves relaxed. "Something small, and maybe sweet, if it's alright?" he said. Hermione eyed him, but the elf zoomed off into the kitchen. "Watching dough rise has to be really boring," he muttered in her ear, and Hermione looked mildly pacified.

They were shortly presented with a basket of rolls and biscuits. Hermione accepted and said, "Actually - could I ask something, if it's alright?"

"Would Miss like something else?"

"It's about the castle, actually," Hermione said hesitantly. "Er - I don't know if you'd know, if you work in the kitchen, but..."

"Mellie has worked in Hogwarts for more than twenty years," the elf said proudly. "And Mellie's parents before her, and their parents before them. Mellie knows a great deal about the castle - but she can't share it if it would cause trouble."

"It wouldn't be causing trouble," Harry said. "We - do you know about the inspectors?"

Mellie's ears flattened visibly, and several other elves working in the vicinity also flinched and hissed, obviously having been eavesdropping. "They are interfering with the castle, sir," Mellie said primly.

"Yeah, well - we heard they want to take some of the books out of the library because they don't approve of them," Harry said. "We were hoping there was somewhere we could set up an.. alternate library, where at least a few students could access it, but somewhere that could be kept secret from the Ministry."

"Only it would have to be a very large space, and one that was protected against a search," Hermione added.

"And it has to be somewhere students can get to anyway," Ron added, although he had been digging through the basket.

Harry expected Mellie to tell them that she couldn't help them - put all together, it was a ridiculous list of requirements, and they would almost certainly need to leave something out - but instead her ears tilted thoughtfully. "Would Misters and Miss wait here a moment?" she said, and vanished into the group of elves in the kitchen.

Harry, Ron and Hermione exchanged glances and waited. "Try one of these," Ron said, mouth full, "They're great - cinnamon."

Hermione huffed a sigh. Harry took one of the rolls Ron was pointing to and broke it open. "Take some," he urged her. "You can tell Mellie how good they are when she comes back, I bet she'll like it."

Hermione reluctantly accepted half at that.

Mellie returned a few minutes later with a second elf. This one had a rosette on its towel, and Harry thought something about the way Mellie trailed it suggested deference.

The new elf bowed. "Could sirs and madam repeat their request so that Nolly may hear?"

Hermione swallowed and said, "We came to ask if the elves knew of any place in the castle where a library could be set up that - the inspectors, and anyone else the Ministry sends, wouldn't find it, but where we could keep a lot of books, and where students could get in. We heard the inspectors at the school were going to confiscate books from the Hogwarts library, and we thought the - the elves might know, because you take care of the whole castle, and humans don't - don't usually talk to you."

"Humans rarely find anything a house elf says worth listening to," Nolly said. This elf's English was more human-like than any of the others Harry had heard. "As for this library, I am thinking that the Come-And-Go room would suit."

"The Come-And-Go room?" Harry asked.

"On the fifth floor, across from the tapestry of Barnabas who taught trolls ballet," Nolly said. Harry's eyes widened involuntarily. "There is a room that appears only when the seeker is in great need of it. One walks back and forth three times, thinking of the need, and if the room judges your need worthy and is able to meet it a door will appear, and the room will contain whatever is necessary. We call it the Come-and-Go Room, or the Room of Requirement. Does this serve?"

"It does," Hermione said faintly; Harry knew that she, too - and Ron, judging by his face - were thinking of the weeks they had spent trying to find a way into the room in that corridor, exactly where the Defense curse originated.

"Yeah, thanks!" Harry said, and they rapidly thanked Mellie for the rolls as well and left the kitchens.

"The _need_ ," Hermione muttered. "But we weren't able to get in--"

"I bet you can't interfere with what other people are doing with the room," Harry said. "So Voldemort needed to hide something there, and us needing to see what he used wasn't enough - that's why the elves would suggest it for a secret library."

"If it only appears to people who need to use it, that's brilliant, that's exactly what we want," Hermione said. "Only - how on earth will we find the place it was hidden, if we can't ask for it? I don't imagine the best room for a hidden library would be the same place."

"We just need something else we've got to hide," Ron said. "Or to set up someone else to look - Harry, I bet Cho would do it if you gave her some instructions and just didn't tell her about the Defense curse."

"Probably," Harry said. "But she'd have to need to hide something."

Musing over how to set up someone to get caught with contraband they needed desperately to hide in reach of the fifth floor corridor took them all the way back to Gryffindor.

"We should go check this room is really there," Hermione said when they had reached the portrait. "I mean, we do _need_ the library, so let's make sure it'll work for that at least before we figure out how to set someone up with contraband. We've still got a few minutes before curfew, we can do it if we hurry."

They made their way to the fifth floor corridor with the portrait of Barnabas the Barmy where they had spent hours last term, and walked, the three of them in concert, up and down the hall. Harry thought, _We need a library - we need to hide books for the students to use - somewhere that won't be suspicious when the Ministry comes...._

When they turned for the third time, a door had appeared in the wall, tall and wooden. Hermione opened it up hesitantly and gasped at the inside.

Harry, following her, could see why. The room inside looked like a wild fantasy of Hermione's. It stretched back for ages, filled with towering shelves of books. The first five or six ranks of shelves were empty, waiting to be filled; but coming closer, Harry saw placards with subject labels identical to the real school library downstairs.

"This is perfect," Hermione said, and with great eagerness strode to the first filled shelves, took down a book, and went to read.

"We've only got ten minutes before we need to go back for curfew," Harry called after her, then turned to Ron. "Do you think we can test if it'll stop an inspector from finding it?"

"Pity Percy isn't here," Ron said, "We could just get him to follow us..."

The next day, Harry asked Cho to come with them after Dueling Club and if she'd be willing to help them open a room that required you to need to hide something to get in. Cho had a solution almost immediately, to Harry's surprise: 

"Wait here, I think she hasn't left yet," she said, and darted back into the classroom. She returned quickly accompanied by a girl Harry thought was a year below him in Ravenclaw colors, with oddly protruding, very round blue eyes and blond hair.

"This is Luna Lovegood," she said. "She's a fourth year from my house. Luna, this is my boyfriend Harry Potter, and Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger."

"Is it?" Luna said vaguely. "Are you all quite sure?"

Harry blinked.

"We're trying to get into a room that needs you to have something to hide in it," Cho said briskly. "Do you have anything you want to hide from your dorm mates?"

"I generally find that hiding is a self-defeating strategy," Luna said. "Daddy says one must always be one's honest self."

"So that they don't steal it?" Cho said, a note of strain creeping into her voice.

"Well, perhaps. If it's for an experiment," Luna said. "I'll come back with it, shall I?" 

"Will she _actually_ come back?" Hermione asked, when Luna was out of earshot down the corridor.

"If she's planning to help at all," Cho said, sighing. "She tends to forget about things she doesn't want to do, but I _think_ this should interest her - her parents are inventors. Or, well, were," she added ominously. "And I know Luna's interested in her mother's work."

Luna was back not too much time later, clutching what looked like a painted muggle shoe box to her chest. It was making a troubling whirring noise, and Harry resolved not to ask. The five of them hurried along to the fifth floor corridor, where Harry explained how to open the room to Luna.

Luna hummed and said, "But what does one really _need?_ " which concerned Harry a bit, but she readily walked back and forth across the hall three times. It seemed that whatever Luna's interpretation of the word had been, it had been enough: the door had appeared again. All four of them crowded behind Luna as she pulled the handle open, and stared.

The library had been a large space, but the room now opened into a positively cavernous hall. Every inch of it was piled with junk. 

There was furniture, there was clothing, there were books and brooms and paintings and much stranger unidentifiable things. It was piled into small hills, the clear space winding among them like a pathway. The ceiling was so high up Harry could not clearly make it out; in addition to hiding things, the hall would have been quite good for indoor Quidditch practice. He resolved immediately never to tell Angelina about the Room. She would have had them practicing five nights a week.

"Quite impressive," Luna said. "Oo, I've heard about this one!" With that she set down the shoe box, picked up a book out of the nearest pile, then sat down in its place and began to read.

"This really is amazing," Cho said, turning in a small circle. Hermione, too, was examining nearby books. 

"Just be careful," Harry said. "We don't know why all of this stuff was hidden - some of it might be cursed. And there's the Defense curse..."

Cho's eyes widened. "I forgot that was here," she said. "That was why you didn't tell me, so I wouldn't be trying to break into someone else's hiding spot?"

"We think it can prevent that," Hermione said, reluctantly snatching her hand back before she touched one of the books. "I mean, some of it's probably perfectly safe, but we should still be careful about touching things..."

"Still, we'd better take a look around," Harry said. "We all know what curse focuses look like - er, we had it in Defense with Moody, at least..."

"So did we," Cho said, and glanced at Luna. "Luna, er, did you hear us?"

"I won't touch anything else, I'm going to stay here and read anyway," Luna said, not looking up. 

Harry and Hermione attempted to locate the Defense curse's trailing threads, as they were able to view magic without the enchanted hand mirrors, although both were out of practice at watching them without getting sucked into exhausting spirals of violent hate. They trailed the tangles of curse around and over piles of junk. Several times, Ron had to pull one of them back from objects even he could tell were obviously cursed, shifting piles that threatened to collapse, or sudden drops in mounds of objects. Cho, meanwhile, followed and searched for anything that might be a curse focus through ordinary methods.

They had wound around several piles and were getting deeper in the room when Cho suddenly gasped. "Oh my god, is that--"

Harry reluctantly tore his eyes from the graceful curve of another spell that had latched onto the Defense curse, returning his focus to reality. "What is it?"

Cho was staring at a tarnished tiara, hanging on a pile next to a cabinet with a blistered surface. She had reached out a hand, but did not seem quite able to touch it. "It _is_ \- it's Ravenclaw's diadem," she whispered.

"What?" Hermione's attention had been drawn. "It can't be, that's been lost for a thousand years!

"There's a statue of her wearing it in Ravenclaw's common room," Cho said. "If it isn't, it's a good copy - and look, people must have been hiding things here for that long, some of those swords look _ancient_..."

"But loads of people have been in here," Hermione said, coming over. "Someone must have seen it and recognized it by now - if anyone who tries to hide something in this room comes to the same place--"

"Maybe people tend to be too panicked to look," Ron said, gazing on with interest. 

"For a _thousand years?_ " Hermione asked.

But Harry's mind had gone elsewhere, back to a conversation they had had over the summer with Lucretia. "Unless it hasn't been here a thousand years," he said, slowly. "Maybe it's only been here for twenty or thirty - since it was rehidden--"

"What?" Cho asked, frowning.

"Oh!" Hermione gasped.

"Cho, get away from it," Harry said, staring at the tarnished tiara. "It's been cursed by Voldemort. He spent years looking for Founder's artifacts, and we've just found another missing one."

They argued for several minutes about whether to move the tiara, whether they would be able to find it when looking for it specifically, and whether they could locate this spot even if the room didn't stop them via magic. Hermione finally suggested that most of them wait with the tiara while someone went to fetch Professor Moody or Dumbledore, whoever they could find first. So reluctantly, having made everyone promise they wouldn't try to touch it when he was gone, Harry took up his bag and hurried out of the room, back into the fifth floor corridor, and then up to the Headmaster's office.

It occurred to him that Dumbledore might not be in his office. After all, it was now half past nine on a week day, and he might well be in his private quarters. He might even have left the school entirely on one of his many other duties. But Harry would have to hope he was there - or ask Moody, but he might have just as much trouble finding him - or McGonagall. He might sneak into the library too to ask Cassiopeia's portrait for help; if nothing else the portraits might know where to find Dumbledore...

But the gargoyles sprang aside at the current password, and when Harry came up the stairs he saw a light on in Dumbledore's office.

"Harry," Dumbledore said, surprised, when Harry opened the door. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

"We think we've found a Horcrux in the school," Harry said, panting slightly from his run. Dumbledore's eyebrows flew up and he was standing at once. "At least, it's a copy of Ravenclaw's diadem - it's in the room the elves told us about when we asked them about a place to hide the library--"

"Please show me at once," Dumbledore said. They retraced Harry's steps all the way back to the fifth floor corridor, where Dumbledore made a soft _aha_ noise at the door, still present; then Harry grasped it and pulled it open.

"Hello," Luna said amiably from where she was still sitting with her book. "Oh, you didn't tell me you were inviting Professor Dumbledore!"

"Er, we found something dangerous in the room, we think," Harry said awkwardly. Luna had pulled a magazine out to compare something in it to the book, and it was hard to ignore the splashy headline questioning whether Cornelius Fudge was secretly a Cyclops. "Excuse us," he added hurriedly and went on.

To his relief, Cho, Ron and Hermione all seemed unharmed, although Ron and Hermione were bickering again over something to do with Lavender, and Cho was staring rather fixedly at the diadem. "Here, sir," Harry said hurriedly; Cho blinked at them, appearing surprised for a moment, then stepped back.

"So I see..." Dumbledore breathed, and brought out his wand. Belatedly he added, "I should show you these spells, Harry, come here - we will need them again-- The first I will cast is simply _hominem revelio_ , which ordinarily tests for the human soul--"

He cast the spell, and a sort of swooping sensation passed through Harry. Dumbledore, nodding, said, "Of course, a Horcrux will also set it off. You try, now, watch the motion--"

Dumbledore seemed barely aware of Ron, Hermione and Cho, all watching avidly, although Harry was quite sure he was not as oblivious as he appeared. He showed Harry several other detection spells for Dark magic and the energy resulting from ritual murder, all of which came up positively on the diadem, before nodding once, sharply. "Thank you," he said, pulling a purple velvet bag from the pocket of his robe. "This will contain the magic so that it is safe to handle," he said, carefully stowing the diadem inside.

"You have all done extremely well," he went on, putting the bag into his robe. "Harry, you should come with me so that I can show you how to destroy it--" Then he stopped; looked around. "It occurs to me," he went on thoughtfully, "That this is the very room in which the traces of the Defense curse disappeared."

"The house elves told us about it," Hermione said, unknowingly repeating Harry, and told Dumbledore what else they had learned about what the house elves called the Come-and-Go Room or Room of Requirement. "--But I'm not sure if we can get back in if we don't need to hide something, to locate the curse and dispel it, sir..." she finished anxiously.

"Oh, that won't be a problem," Luna said dreamily from behind Dumbledore. Several of them jumped. Harry had not noticed her approach.

"Indeed, Miss Lovegood?" Dumbledore said pleasantly.

"I thought you might need to get back into this room, so I made sure to bring my vampiric bluebells," Luna said, eyes focusing disconcertingly on something a few feet above their heads. "I need to come back and water them every day, so I should be able to find the door. You'll just have to follow me, that's all," she said, smiling at them.

There was a pause.

"Luna, that's brilliant," Cho said, voice rather strangled.

"Thank you," Luna said. "I did think it was rather clever, but I find other people rarely agree."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Liked this? [Find it and me](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/636141348519559168/the-glass-fortress-chpt-13-the-hogwarts-library) on tumblr!


	15. Progression and Panic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two apologies: I'm sorry this is up so late in the day, and I'm sorry for any formatting errors. My laptop died tragically this morning and I had to reconstruct the edited version of this chapter from a PDF. I'm not sure I caught all of the copy/paste problems. Don't worry, the rest of the book is backed up.
> 
> ETA: I knew I'd forgotten to say something here before. Asteria's name is spelled that way on purpose. Asteria and Astoria are both real names, but Asteria is from Greek mythology like Daphne, while Astoria isn't. Since she isn't named in the books, I changed her name slightly to match her sister.

By now it was getting late. The others hurried back to their dorms, Cho kissing Harry goodbye quickly. Meanwhile, Harry accompanied Dumbledore down the winding pathways of hidden treasure and junk, out the door and back to the Headmaster's office.

"A Horcrux is a difficult thing to destroy," Dumbledore told him once they were securely at his desk, the bag with the diadem sitting on top. "The ritual which ensouls it also renders it capable of repairing or resisting most ordinary harm, and the soul fragment within can take some limited action to defend it. In addition, the object will often have other protections against destruction applied to it by the owner, who of course fears that very eventuality."

"Act to protect itself, how?" Harry said, eyeing the bag warily.

"In extreme cases, possession, as you recall, although that requires long term, intimate contact," Dumbledore said. "It may project itself and argue against its destruction, or attempt to frighten the attacker away or sow discord between multiple foes. It may project emotions - longing to use it, appreciation for its beauty, uncontrollable frustration - even exhaustion to get the attacker to temporarily abandon their attempts."

"Sir," Harry said, "I noticed Cho staring at it when we came back..."

"Indeed. Ravenclaw's diadem was supposed to grant the wearer great wisdom. The Horcrux did not attempt to speak directly to her amongst a group of several people, all wary of a curse, but it may have encouraged her desire to put it on or preserve it. Fortunately you retrieved me before it could get terribly far, and Miss Chang is strong willed – I will call her up to explain matters later, including that you were not at liberty to do it yourself.

"Now, in order to destroy a Horcrux we will need an extremely destructive substance, capable of destroying magic and not merely the object's physical integrity. Fiendfyre will work, but is notoriously prone to killing the caster. There is a magical form of acid which has been successful, but is illegal to import and in any case extremely expensive. There is, however, one rare substance available to us, provided by you."

"Me?" Harry said, blankly, then remembered the diary. "Basilisk venom, sir?"

"Indeed. I took the liberty of asking Fawkes to retrieve a few fangs when I began my search, being unable to enter the Chamber myself," Dumbledore said, rising. "As it happens, I discovered the sword of Gryffindor was impregnated with the venom when you stabbed the creature's mouth, so it presents a more convenient option. If you will wield it, Harry?"

"Right," Harry said nervously, and got up to approach the glass case holding the sword, then nervously reached inside. The sword seemed to hum in his hand softly when he touched the hilt. Any caution he had felt about daring to take it from its case vanished. "So - what do I do with it?"

"I will open the bag," Dumbledore said. "I believe the diadem may manifest then, or otherwise attempt to defend itself. It will be panicked. You must take one blow at the diadem, cutting into it firmly; the venom in the sword will do the rest."

"Sir, your desk--"

"Is both repairable and replaceable," Dumbledore said, looking amused. "The elves will be considerably more annoyed if we place the diadem on the floor and cut into it instead, particularly as the castle itself has magic to destroy with that venom."

"Right," Harry said, and carefully readied the sword.

Dumbledore carefully loosened the drawstring of the purple bag. Then he dumped out the Horcrux. Harry moved the sword into place.

The room fell into artificial shadow. Harry, surprised, looked up, but the torches were still burning, as was the oil lamp by the desk. Their light had only been curtailed, so that it could not reach far beyond its source. The room took on an oddly sinister air. The silver instruments gleamed threateningly, the portraits' murmur was ominous, and Dumbledore's blue eyes and ancient face appeared almost demonic, ancient and terrible.

 _"Harry..."_ a voice whispered. _"Don't trust him... He has lied to you before - should you not wait..."_

"Shut up," Harry said. He had unconsciously lowered the sword when the room fell into shadow. Now he raised it again. Looking at the blade of the sword focused him. The rubies somehow reflected torchlight and lamplight that did not seem to reach the sword at all, casting light into the darkness from the hilt.

_"Harry, this path will destroy you alongside me - he LIES--"_

Harry could not muster any precision. He only swung the sword in one mighty blow downward, and cleaved the diadem in two.

At once the room brightened, the shadows chased back to their true locations. Somewhat embarrassed, Harry noted that the desk top had also been cleaved in two.

"Oh, well," Dumbledore said lightly. "I had been thinking of changing it anyway - the ink stains were getting quite bad."

"Right," Harry said shakily, putting the sword back into its case. "It's gone?"

"It is dead," Dumbledore said firmly, resting one hand on Harry's shoulder. "We are now one step closer to destroying Voldemort himself. And Harry? Well done."

It was just as well that all three of them had a free period first thing Friday morning, because Harry, Ron and Hermione stayed up very late in the common room that night, going over every piece of what had happened when he went with Dumbledore repeatedly. Harry was grateful that Ron and Hermione didn't want to go up to bed, either. He couldn't imagine sleeping with the memory of Dumbledore's darkened office in his mind.

They had other things to speculate about as well. There was the question of how the rest of the library group would take their discovery of the Room, and what would be done about the Defense curse. Ron volunteered that Bill had mentioned over the summer that he would be coming back if and when they located the anchor of the Defense curse, so assuming that it was within the Room, he would probably soon visit Hogwarts again.

("And he's not mad at me for seeing you," Ron had added hastily to Hermione, pulling her tighter against his side. Harry, with practice, caught only a brief glimpse of Hermione's pleasure at the feeling of Ron's chest before he managed to remove himself from her mind. "He, er, wrote to me a week or so ago, told me Mum was being a pillock and I should ignore her.")

Indeed, Dumbledore had a note sent to Harry at breakfast to inform him that there was no need to search further for the curse anchor, so Harry supposed he must have gone back alone. He found himself wondering whether Dumbledore slept at night, or perhaps had a Time-Turner in order to fit in sleeping time in with an additional self.

Saturday, Quidditch practice was canceled in favor of the Ravenclaw-Hufflepuff match. Harry screamed himself hoarse when Cho caught the Snitch; he was glad that he still had months before the final game of the season, which would pit them directly against each other. He found himself smuggled into the Ravenclaw common room for the victory party after, where he had a chance to see the statute Cho had mentioned of the diadem.

Harry felt a brief pang of guilt for destroying the original; then Cho was kissing him and he was completely distracted. Ravenclaw, it seemed, sometimes smuggled in Firewhiskey for victory parties in addition to butterbeer. ("I'm of age, it's fine," Cho said, giggling, and kissed him again after downing a shot. He did not have the wherewithal to analyze the taste of it on her lips, although he did make sure to rinse his mouth in the bathroom before he went back to Gryffindor lest Hermione or Parvati notice.)

Sunday morning Harry went out flying with Cho, Draco and Ron. Because the pitch was occupied by a Hufflepuff practice, they flew over the frozen, snow-covered lake instead. With Ron's new broom it was easier to have a group session this year, not having to worry about someone getting bored and left out while they traded off. Their game of tag transitioned into an airborne snowball fight over the course of an hour, after which they trooped in, slightly soggy and very cold, to collect Hermione from the library and go to the Great Hall for lunch and hot cocoa.

Draco and Cho joined them at Gryffindor while they ate, and they were occupied in a rousing argument about whether Slytherin still had a chance in the House Cup. "I hate you," Draco said calmly to Harry, although he was trying not to smile. "You realize I've never lost to another Seeker? If we didn't play _you_ first every year, I'd look brilliant."

"You lost to me during that pick up game last spring," Cho pointed out.

"That's because you're about twice as good during practice as you are in actual matches," Draco said. "You tense up and obsess over stopping me or Harry from finding the Snitch - you're not as bad playing Diggory, probably because his broom's not as fast - and it makes you totally lose track of searching."

"Does Flint know you're tutoring Ravenclaws?" Harry asked, fighting a laugh.

Draco glared. "I'm helping her reduce _your_ points in the last match."

"Hi, Susan," Hermione said loudly. Harry looked around guiltily and spotted Susan Bones at the end of the table.

"Sorry," Draco said, moving down the bench, "Do you want to join us?"

"Thanks," Susan said, sitting next to him. "I was actually hoping I could have a few words with you - can this lot hear or should we go off somewhere?"

"Everyone here should be fine," Draco said, glancing down the section of Gryffindor. "Personal or political?"

"A bit of both." Susan started piling vegetables on the empty plate in front of her. "It's about Hannah."

"Is she alright?" Harry asked awkwardly, hoping he wasn't intruding.

Susan glanced up at him, apparently not offended. "She's about as well as she can be, considering," she said. "She and her mum were close, and with her family... Anyway, Draco, I'm going to put this to you very coldly because I think you'll appreciate hearing it that way, although Hannah said she couldn't imagine actually saying this to anyone."

"Noted," Draco said. "Er, have I done something without noticing?"

"Without _noticing?_ " Hermione said.

"Well, being a sadistic jerk gets to be a habit if you cultivate it," Draco said, "Sometimes things just slip out."

Susan looked like she wasn't sure whether to laugh or not, but said, "No, it's not that. All of you know about her family, right? Well, her uncle Radulph sent her a letter demanding she step down, signed by a couple of the other conservative family elders and she's written back refusing. She expects she'll be challenged before Christmas if she goes home, and if not then over the summer."

The table grew quiet with horror.

Susan went on calmly, "What she really needs - apart from about five years of intensive dueling study - is a champion. Her mother was the duelist in the family, but Hannah doesn't have a lot of talent, or any interest before this, and they _expected_ her to inherit decades from now. There are elders who agree with her, but none of them are good, or willing to stick their necks out for her." Harry realized as Susan spoke that her affable demeanor was hiding fury; her knuckles were white on her fork.

"Aunt Amelia's willing to do it, and Harry, your godfather volunteered too, I suppose he's feeling a lot better now. But in order to actually get her family to back down Hannah needs the impression of a permanent association, not just a one time favor, and she needs political support as well, _within_ her family."

"And she's not engaged," Draco said, before Harry could ask what Susan was getting at. "So you're asking me out on her behalf?"

"I'm asking you to ask her," Susan said. "I got her to agree that there was nothing wrong with making it known she would appreciate being helped, _finally_. I am under explicit instructions not to bargain or make you agree, so I'm going back to Hufflepuff, now, so you can think about it. Thanks for the broccoli, the stuff on our table's boiled and horrid." With that, she took her plate and went.

"Well," Draco said, thoughtfully, "I sort of expected this to wait until Father gets around to disowning me, but I suppose none of the other children associated with the House are single."

"Are you going to do it?" Hermione asked him.

Draco shrugged. "Of course, at least for a while. I imagine I'll want to come to more specific terms with her before we make it public. But I'll give it a day first, I don't want her to think I agreed without really considering it."

"Holding it over her head?" Ron said.

" _No_ , Weasley - Ron. I'm indicating that I'm taking her request seriously and intend to follow through on my decision. I _also_ have a certain amount of sympathy for someone worried about being murdered by their family," Draco snapped, and got up. "Excuse me, I have to finish an essay." An icy, wooden feeling in Harry's chest slowly receded as Draco left, and he realized only belatedly that the feeling had been Draco's, not his own.

It took a while for the conversation to resume.

There was a Hogsmeade visit the next weekend, and Draco got up during lunch Monday and went to the Hufflepuff table to ask Hannah to come with him. Harry watched surreptitiously, trying not to stare. Hannah smiled a little bit stiltedly at Draco and said something Harry couldn't make out, then stood on her toes to kiss Draco's cheek, so it couldn't have gone badly - not that the outcome had really been in doubt.

Wednesday, they were distracted from their classes by an entry in the paper. Hermione, who disappeared behind the _Prophet_ every morning at breakfast for increasingly long periods, gave a soft gasp.

"What?" Ron said, hastily swallowing, "I just asked if you'd pass the sausage--"

"Not that," Hermione said, lowering the paper. "Look--"

Harry leaned over her shoulder and read the headline: "MLE Employee Mauled By Werewolf."

Swallowing, he skimmed the text below: a werewolf residing in an undisclosed area had escaped its securement during the November seventh full moon, fatally mauled and partially eaten a high MLE official. The information had been cleared for press release after the investigation concluded the werewolf's claim that someone had interfered with her security was baseless and she was slated for execution...

"Execution?" Harry muttered. "But she didn't have any idea what she was doing--"

"She should've locked herself up better, then," Ron said, looking ill. "She _ate_ someone."

"She said someone let her out of her cage," Hermione said grimly from deeper in the paper, having flipped to where the article continued. "The Ministry's saying there's no evidence of it but they don't say _why,_ and we know how they treat werewolves. I'm going to write to Sirius," she said, emerging and flipping her hair back anxiously.

"You think it was - his cousin?" Harry said softly.

"We know she probably murdered Emmeline Vance," Hermione said. "Even if it wasn't, if he can do _something_ about it... And if this was a murder by someone else, it was clever, wasn't it? I mean, no one would believe the werewolf no matter what she said, so there won't be any effort to investigate properly, and if they rush to execute her there's no way of proving her claims, or that she saw anything."

"I didn't know the Ministry executed people," Harry said. "I mean, they didn't kill his cousin, or any of the other Death Eaters, did they?"

"They don't execute humans anymore," Ron said quietly. "There's the Kiss, but it's really rare, it's only been used three times in the last century. But werewolves are under the Department of Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, so it's like - like with Buckbeak."

Harry and Hermione bid Ron goodbye and went up to Arithmancy in a grim mood.

Friday, Draco sprung a distraction on them at breakfast; he wanted to introduce them to Daphne and Tracey.

"We've met them," Harry pointed out.

"Only in class," Draco said. "Look, I'm trying to get Daphne to warm up to Hermione, and I'm sure she _wants_ to, but her parents - you know about her father, right? Her mother's just as politically conservative as my father, they know each other from - from old times, but I think Daphne knows better even if she won't admit it to me. If we can hang out a bit..."

"Alright," Hermione said, softening to this angle of detaching her from schoolwork. "Where are we going?"

Draco was relieved. "There's an old lab we use sometimes for student gatherings, it's near Slytherin but not too close and the walls are reinforced, so nobody hears you," he said. "Meet us there? Bring Cho if you like," he added to Harry.

When they arrived at the appointed lab in the dungeons, they found a room full of student furnishings: armchairs, end tables and sofas that were either transfigured or obviously from storage. There were even a few muggle beanbag chairs.

"The only thing we're missing is food," Ron said, turning around.

"I think we have just enough time to go to the kitchens and get some," Harry said, checking his watch. "What time did everyone say they'd be here?"

"Draco said a half hour or so after dinner," Hermione said. "And Cho was supposed to come soon, but I think she got trapped talking about Quidditch tactics with the Ravenclaw captain."

"So she might be a while," Harry said, getting up. "I'll go."

The house elves did not seem offended to be asked politely for a basket of food for ten people or so, and it was a faster process without Ron and Hermione bickering about the appropriateness of the request behind him, Harry thought slightly guiltily. He met Cho on the way back, and they discussed her catch on Saturday in microscopic detail, enjoying that they had neither Hermione nor Ron present to be bored by the details of their position. Their lakeside morning walks had become rather brief and often aborted as the weather got worse.

Catching a glimpse of uncomfortably specific feelings from within, Harry paused and cleared his throat after cracking the door. When he opened it the rest of the way, Hermione and Ron, sure enough, were red faced and occupied fixing their clothing. Harry loudly clomped over to the most central table and began unpacking the food, certain he was blushing brightly, too.

"How many people did you tell them this was for, again?" Cho asked, coming over.

"I said not more than ten. I suppose we can set it out over a few tables..."

"Excellent," Ron said, coming over now that his robes were fastened again and cramming most of an eclair in his mouth.

" _Honestly_ ," Hermione said from over by the wall. Harry and Cho rolled their eyes at each other.

Draco showed up not long after that, accompanied by Daphne and Tracey, no surprise at this point, but also a very pretty younger girl with trailing, pale orange curls. "This is Asteria, my little sister," Daphne told them, steering the girl along when she was about to veer off towards the pastries.

"Asteria, these are friends of Draco's, Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Cho Chang and Hermione Granger."

"A pleasure to meet you," Asteria said, giving a short bow. Harry bowed back, slightly awkwardly. He knew by now it wasn't an insult but he never felt entirely comfortable greeting women who didn't shake hands. Ron bowed beside him, looking about as off balance, while Cho and Asteria shook hands and then, Asteria appearing mildly surprised but not offended, Asteria and Hermione.

"I hope you don't mind her coming along," Daphne said in an undertone, shooing her sister off to look through the main picnic basket, "But she has the worst time with her dorm mates, I didn't want to abandon her all night. They only stopped hexing her because I showed them I'd do worse back."

"I said it was alright," Draco said slightly anxiously. "She's in third year."

Harry shrugged. "I don't see any problem with it," he said, although he did wish Draco had mentioned this in advance. But fortunately they hadn't been discussing anything important when the others arrived.

"So." Tracey took a butterbeer bottle and flopped back onto a couch with an exaggerated sigh. "I see what you mean, Draco, I feel better already knowing there's no wand pointed at me. Stop glaring like that, Daffy, come sit. They invited us here, you can be nice."

"Stop calling me Daffy," Daphne said, although she went, and allowed Tracey's arm around her shoulders. As if this had given them all a signal, the rest of them found seats then, although Asteria sat a ways off from the older students, dug out a small pad of parchment and began to sketch in it.

"Then stop being so daft, Daffy." Tracey tweaked Daphne's nose and ducked the answering elbow. "Hey, Draco. I've been meaning to ask somewhere private, did you really ask out Abbott?"

"Miss Bones advised me that it would be well received, yes." Draco had settled in a couch near the Slytherin girls and was delicately unwinding a cinnamon bun from itself, nibbling the frosting without eating it.

"It's just that we thought you were..." Tracey gestured with her bottle.

"Starkly, flamingly homosexual?" Daphne said with such a straight, haughty face that Harry took a moment to connect the words and choked.

Draco sighed loudly, but did not actually look surprised, so Harry supposed that Daphne and Tracey probably weren't just extremely affectionate best friends. "It's not an exclusive preference. At least, I don't think so," he amended, "No offense to you lovely girls--"

"None taken, Mister Malfoy," Daphne drawled.

Ron was starting to look out of his depth, Hermione thoughtful.

"You aren't?" Cho said, sounding mildly surprised. "The student bookkeepers will be disappointed."

Harry tried not to choke.

"I said I'm not sure," Draco said, rolling his eyes. "Anyway, it was mostly political, her uncle's working up to challenge her for headship and she wants an association that will convince him she can throw a Black family member at him as many times as necessary."

"I didn't think Radulph Abbott was stupid enough to be baited into an honor duel with Narcissa Black," Daphne said, intrigued.

"Andromeda's scarier in a fight," Harry said. Both girls glanced at him in surprise as though they had forgotten he was there.

"They're both pretty bad," Hermione said. "I mean, Andromeda comes off as more of a lunatic but I wouldn't want to fight either of them for real."

"You've been practicing with them?" Daphne asked, tilting her head.

"Over the summer, yeah," Harry said. "And their mother, and Andy's daughter, Nymphadora Tonks - she's an Auror."

"If he issues the challenge," Draco interjected, "Nobody has to bait him. Hannah has the right to appoint a champion automatically as a minor _or_ a woman."

"So it's going to be a surprise, then?" Daphne asked. "And hopefully they'll kill him, and if they _don't_ she can drop the idea you're going to marry her and she can do it forever as a chaser?"

"I don't know if the _plan_ is to murder him outright," Draco said, shrugging, "It probably depends on who actually acts as champion, but he'd be stupid not to consider the risk in a duel, yeah."

Ron was looking uncomfortable, and Harry was not quite sure what to feel, but – rather disturbingly - Hermione seemed unperturbed. "Susan did tell us Sirius volunteered," she said, taking a bite of her eclair, "And he's generally rather anti-murder as a problem solving method - I mean, especially compared with Druella or Narcissa, but also in general - but if he thinks Radulph's going to kill his own niece the first chance he gets..."

"Yeah, if he'd said he would send Narcissa Black to do it in advance everyone would know it was a hit for hire," Cho said, scoffing slightly.

"Don't be crude, Chang." Daphne flicked an imaginary speck of dust off her robes. "Purebloods do not take hits for hire, we assassinate."

Harry decided that they had better get off this subject before someone got really upset, or incriminated themselves. "So," he said, "Have you two decided what you're doing on that Arithmancy project yet? --Don't look bored, Ron, Draco was talking about modifying his broom..."

The rather stilted start aside, Harry felt that the idea had been a success by the end of the night. They talked in a group until the supply of food had been exhausted and then broke up into smaller activities. Hermione spent most of their time studying, as did Draco, who was nearly as obsessive about schoolwork as her. But instead of bearing the burden of distracting a grouchy Ron from his girlfriend's occupation, Harry was able to get a game of Exploding Snap started with Tracey and invite Ron to join in when he had rousingly failed to get Hermione to stop reading, and afterwards Tracey got out a gobstones board and coaxed Daphne into playing with them. The Gryffindors left for Astronomy after a few hours, and the others followed them, not wanting to be too exhausted for Hogsmeade tomorrow.

Saturday the twenty-fifth of November dawned bright and viciously cold. Harry and Cho met in the entrance hall and took the chance to kiss briefly before they wound their scarves thoroughly about their faces for the trip down to the village. Ron and Hermione were going together again and trailed after them, although Draco and Hannah had either left earlier or were going later.

Despite hats, gloves and Warming Charms, they were all shivering by the time they got down to the village. Cho pointed hopefully at the Three Broomsticks, and the others nodded hastily and made their way inside, where they could warm up over butterbeer, winter gear loosened, and debate where to go next.

"I should probably go Christmas shopping," Harry said, thinking of the holiday in only a few weeks, "I have no idea if they'll let us out of the house by ourselves to do it at home, and I'm not sure I know what to order for everyone."

"Good point," Cho said, "I've got to go to a few parties over break and it's rude not to bring something for the host."

Ron was starting to look flustered. Harry realized belatedly that having to buy presents - or fail to - in front of his girlfriend and his friends would probably be embarrassing for him. "We could meet you back here, if you want time to yourselves? I know it's only your second visit together," he tried.

Hermione hastily agreed, and Ron looked mollified.

Warmed up again, Harry and Cho left to wander down High Street, discussing their next move. Harry had to get at least token gifts for a great number of people, and was not yet used to it. "There's Ron and Hermione, of course - and you," he added with a teasing smile he still didn't feel quite sure about pulling off, "And then there's Sirius, Andromeda, Narcissa, Druella, I should probably buy Lucretia and Draco something, Remus and Ted and Tonks."

"So twelve," Cho said, leaning on his arm. "Do you know where you want to go? I can pick up little impersonal things anywhere - we usually do gifts on the lunar New Year and it's not until the middle of February this year, so I'll have time to shop for family."

"Should I get you something then instead?" Harry asked, caught slightly off guard.

Cho grinned. "You could do both," she teased, then added with a straighter face, "Either is fine, really, and we all usually get permission to go home for a couple of days for the New Year, so Christmas might be better for the two of us for now. I mean, we'll probably see each other over the holidays for at least one Yule Ball, and I won't be so distracted with family stuff."

"Alright," Harry said. He realized that in some ways he knew just as little about what Christmas holidays would be like as part of the House of Black for real as he knew about Cho's family traditions.

They walked down High Street, ducking inside whenever they saw something interesting or were too cold to continue. Hogsmeade had a number of small shops Harry had never noticed much, being disinclined to spend much money and not having many people to buy presents for, or anywhere to keep possessions aside from his trunk. He looked around curiously when they went inside.

Cho proved helpful especially in shopping for the Black family women, who Harry had felt rather lost choosing presents for. She did not seem universally comfortable inside the sort of shops she said were best for it, stopping and anxiously spelling cat hair off her robes before the first. She had been raised around but half-outside pureblood society in the same place Harry was now, as a halfblood in a pureblood house, and had had explicit etiquette lessons on gift-giving for British purebloods during holidays which fell outside her family's cultural background. She also had seen at least Druella, Narcissa and Draco _around_ , even if her family had been on the other side of the war, and had a general idea of their taste in clothing.

"I think you've just saved my life," Harry said, having acquired Lucretia's Christmas gift and concluded shopping for what he had begun thinking of as the proper half of the family. "Everyone else should be easier, I know they won't take offense if I just buy them something I think they'll _like_."

Cho laughed. "Let's stop and get a coffee before we shop more," she said, "You can buy me more chocolate to thank me."

"I'll get you one of every pastry they sell," Harry threatened. "--No, I really did that first year on the train, I'd never had money to spend before in my _life_."

"I'll keep that in mind if I ever think you're holding out on me," Cho said. "Two will be fine for today, but wait for next time."

Unfortunately, they were close enough to Madam Puddifoot's that there was no tactful way for Harry to refuse it, but he supposed resignedly that the baking really was quite good. Fortunately, the cold weather had held off many students for whom the novelty of Hogsmeade visits had worn off, and it was not so crowded as last time. They piled up their purchases in a spare chair. In addition to Harry's gifts for Druella, Narcissa, Lucretia and Draco, Cho had bought a hair ornament she said would do as a gift for the hostess of the Yule Ball her family was invited to on Christmas Day, and a package of several lacy scarves for unexpected needs over the holidays.

Harry gamely ignored the kissing going on on all sides and drank his coffee. It was slightly less disturbing than last time, maybe because he was older, or only because it was less of a shock. Still, after twenty or thirty minutes he felt a need for a break and excused himself to go to the washroom, which he hoped would have a less concentrated amount of pink.

Edging around the other customers was a delicate balance, but eventually Harry freed himself  
from the domain of bows and doilies and made it through a door into the back hallway of the shop.

This was substantially less decorated and made primarily of quite inoffensive dark wood. Harry was just dodging around several stacked boxes, looking for the door to the boys' toilet, when a door at the other end of the hallway opened.

"Sorry," Harry said, automatically moving aside to let the witch coming in pass. She was very tall and thin, with several layers of navy gauze veiling her face totally. He wondered if she would have to remove the veil to drink her coffee, and if so what the point was, not that he had the firmest grasp of this subject anyway. She nodded to him, inching around him in the narrow corridor. They were so close together it was hard not to touch.

Harry had only a fraction of a second of a warning. The tight squeeze might have been fortunate: he felt her go for her wand a moment before she actually had it out, and this saved him. He plunged to the ground, reflexes honed by years of Quidditch, and red light shot over his head and dissipated harmlessly against the wall - a Stunner that had missed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Liked this update? [Reblog it on tumblr](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/636811515356479489/the-glass-fortress-chpt-14-progression-and-panic) or come talk to me!


	16. The Attack

Harry rolled to his feet, wishing for more room to dodge, and went for the open door at the end of the hall. He groped frantically in his pocket for his wand. The veiled witch was between him and the rest of the shop, he would never get past her. Only belatedly, as he dodged a second Stunner, did it occur to him to cry for help. 

He opened his mouth and shouted "HELP, ATTACK!" but oddly, the witch did not react to his cry at all, only shooting off another Stunner. He heard no outcry from the shop - no sound at all, actually. She must have cast a spell on the door into the main room, he thought, panting, which would block out sound.

Harry got out the back door too easily, the veiled witch following in no particular hurry. As he slammed the door shut and hissed " _Colloportus_ " to lock it, he realized why: the back of Madam Puddifoot's opened on a bare, gray alley between streets of shops, with only a few locked back doors and no easy access to the street itself. The nearer end of the alley led only to the bare, empty hills surrounding Hogsmeade, where no help would be forthcoming and a single student would easily be picked off.

He took all this in in an instant, and then he had to duck again. A second figure, this one cloaked with a deep hood shadowing its face, had been waiting in the alley, and immediately cast another spell. He did not recognize the indigo bolt of light that followed it, but he shot a Stunner of his own back, then a trip jinx, which he was now capable of casting with only a muttered incantation. The cloaked figure dodged the first but stumbled into the second as Harry had hoped, and he was able to catch it with his next Stunning Spell.

Harry had no time to uncover the figure's face or even to catch his breath. The door behind him into Madam Puddifoot's clicked as it unlocked in that same moment. Harry took off down the alley towards the far end, where there would be people in the street. The Death Eaters would not have gone to such an effort to catch him alone, he thought grimly, if they had been willing to attack in front of other people.

The veiled witch was coming up the alley after him. She shot two more spells at him and he dodged both, but throwing himself aside from the third took him into an alcove formed by two off set shops and he realized she was trying less to hit him and more to herd him into a corner. 

He cast a slicing curse back and tried to throw himself into the main alley again, but it had not been enough of a distraction and her next spell connected. Harry gasped in pain as something crunched in his left ankle and stumbled to a halt, swinging around to put the wall at his back. He knew there was no way he would reach the street quickly enough with a broken ankle. His only choice was to incapacitate his second attacker.

He put up a Shield Charm just in time to reflect her next Stunner, but her wand flicked again and he threw himself instinctively to the ground, shouting in pain as his ankle was jarred. Whatever she had cast blasted scorch marks into the wood behind him, unhindered by the Shield Charm still hanging in the air. Her own shield deflected both of his Stunners, and Harry rapidly had to recast his own to stop them from hitting him on the rebound.

This Death Eater was a much more effective duelist than the cloaked one, and Harry could neither run, nor keep up dodging with a broken ankle. Most of the truly offensive spells he knew could be countered with the range of shields an experienced adult had to hand. Realizing this, Harry was suddenly, horribly aware of the luck on his side in his previous encounters with danger. Quirrell had needed him alive and conscious to find the Stone, and had been near death anyway after months possessed, while Tom Riddle's memory had been crippled both by his half-real state and by his own sense of melodrama. Peter Pettigrew had spent years as a rat forgetting magic, and besides Harry had had Remus and Sirius at his side at the time... 

Harry wished Sirius was here. True, this witch was not trying to kill him here and now, but he did not think he would last long if knocked unconscious by a follower of Voldemort.

As Harry tried to force her back with several quick Slicing Curses, his eyes caught on the fluttering gauze veil. Undoubtedly there was a charm to make it easier for her to see through it, but that she would wear the garment at all meant something. He could not reach help quickly in the alley, but anyone might look out a window and see her cursing him below. If her face was covered that meant little as long as she got away, but if she was recognized...

" _Incendio_ ," Harry hissed, jerking his wand at the tail of the veil where it whipped out behind her. Her shield was focused on the center of her body mass, and his spell hit its target. 

The lacy gauze ignited swiftly and totally. The Death Eater cried out and ripped the veil off over her head before it could set fire to her hair and robes as well. Harry had just enough time to catch the glimmer of magic over her face and cast, " _Discoperio_ ," to dispel the glamour that provided a second layer of disguise before she turned to face him, wand raised again.

The Death Eater's face meant nothing to him. She had long, pale red hair and freckles, and her expression was fixed in a wide grin, eyes alight and focused on him. Somehow it was more disturbing than the hate or mocking fury he had seen on Voldemort and his followers before.

A rustling sensation crept over his feet. Only belatedly Harry glanced down and frantically cast another cutting charm, leaping aside and screaming in pain as his ankle came down hard, clear, at least, of the vines that had been growing up his legs. His follow up blasting curse half connected and sent her stumbling back a few steps, at least. She must, Harry thought, panting, be getting tired - she had sent at least ten or fifteen powerful spells towards him - not that it was much of a comfort with his state. He tried the same trick with _Incendio_ , this time aiming at the hem of her robes, but she was ready for it now and conjured water immediately, giving him only a second or two to catch his breath.

A shop door swung open. Both of them froze and looked up. Harry felt hope die in his chest when he saw the small figure emerging alone in Hogwarts uniform. He had no desire to get another student killed alongside him. 

Asteria Greengrass looked up, wide eyed above the scarf wrapped around her face, and nearly dropped her package. " _Mum?_ "

An extremely awkward silence reigned.

"Asteria," the Death Eater said, "Are you supposed to be out by yourself right now?"

"Daphne's off with Tracey again, and Gaia was teasing me so I didn't want to stay in Honeydukes with everyone. I thought I'd go find her, and I wouldn't be alone _long_ , but the girls in my class wouldn't let me out the front door. Harry, did you hurt yourself?" Asteria said, hurrying forward. "Your ankle doesn't look good--"

"Er, it's not bad," Harry croaked, heart pounding wildly. He could not believe that this was really the end of it. Certainly Lucius Malfoy would not have hesitated to curse him in front of Draco. But Asteria was offering her hand to pull him to his feet, and in the process interspersing herself between him and the Death Eater who was, apparently, the Greengrass sisters' mother. 

"It looks _awful_ ," Asteria said. "We should go find Professor Flitwick, he was right out front of Honeydukes. Where are your friends? Why are you out here alone?" She peered back and forth as though expecting Ron and Hermione to leap from behind a doorway.

"Er - I was in Madam Puddifoot's with Cho, I - stepped out to get some air," he said. He was not entirely sure what Asteria's mother would do if Harry told her daughter that she had been trying to kidnap him two minutes ago, but he did not particularly like their odds, even supposing Asteria would take his side. If the Death Eater was going to pretend everything was normal for her daughter, he would not break that illusion yet.

"Perhaps you could go get him, Aster?" the Death Eater said, in the strained tone of a woman trying to be patient.

Harry's breath caught.

"Oh, but we're not supposed to be alone, like you said," Asteria said, blinking wide eyes at her mother, "And if he catches me I'll get detention - can't you go? Or you could fix his leg yourself and then we could _all_ go," Asteria said, sounding pleased with herself.

Faced with little choice, Mrs. Greengrass leaned down. Harry tensed again when she pointed her wand at his leg, but she only cast two healing spells. The pain vanished, and his ankle snapped back into position, damage mending visibly. When Harry tentatively put weight on it, he found it as good as new.

"There!" Asteria said brightly. "You're so good at that. What are you doing in Hogsmeade, Mum?" she asked, letting go of Harry and flinging herself at her mother in a hug.

The Death Eater caught her daughter and sent a look over her head at Harry that was not so much furious or disgusted as wryly amused. "I had a few errands to run and thought I'd see if I could catch any of you girls," she said calmly. "Then I heard someone shouting back here. I supposed you tripped?" she said to Harry, lips twitching over her daughter's head.

"Dumb thing to do, really," Harry said, staring flatly back at her.

She smiled. "I'll just walk you back up to High Street, then. I imagine your friends must be waiting for you."

Harry's heart raced for every moment of the walk up the alley. It was not so terribly far now that his ankle would hold his weight, but it seemed to take an eternity anyway. Asteria had grabbed firmly onto his left hand, and her nails digging into his skin were the only clear hint she knew anything was amiss. She chattered at her mother continuously about her Charms homework, what she thought of her new electives classes, and some drama involving a missing teapot in the Slytherin girls' dorms. Mrs. Greengrass replied occasionally, calm and taciturn. 

Harry wondered whether he could prevent her from returning and rescuing the other Death Eater, the one he had knocked unconscious. But he had barely escaped himself, and that only by Asteria's intervention, and when Mrs. Greengrass strode down the street away from them, he knew he did not dare turn back to check.

Asteria slumped weakly against the wall the moment her mother turned the corner. "Oh, Morgana," she said, very softly, and he knew she had understood exactly what had happened.

"I think you just saved my life," Harry said quietly.

"I know," Asteria said. "I mean, you're welcome. Is that what you say here?" She giggled weakly. "I assume you have more experience, I mean. How did you really end up out there?"

"I went to use the toilet and she ambushed me in the back corridor of Madam Puddifoot's," Harry said. "Chased me out the door - there was another Death Eater waiting - oh, no, Cho."

"Let's go find her, she must be worried," Asteria said. "Then we should probably all go back up to the castle. Before someone _else_ tries to kidnap you. Did anyone know you were going to Madam Puddifoot's?"

Harry shook his head. "We hadn't planned it. They must have been following me around the village," he said, thinking about it. "Waiting for me to be alone for a moment." The realization disturbed him for more than one reason. He hadn't been alone at all last month; had he been shadowed for the entire October visit, as well?

"They might just have informants who tipped them off," Asteria said, as though this was any comfort. "Madam Puddifoot's progressive but she's usually got a few employees helping and they come and go. Come on."

They found Cho looking increasingly worried at his table. A few words from Harry turned her from anxious to terrified. They rapidly paid their bill and went to find Professor Flitwick, who Cho knew best as her Head of House and insisted would help. Harry felt a bit stupid once she pointed it out. Of course the teachers needed to know someone had tried to kidnap him in the middle of Hogsmeade. Neither he or Asteria had even thought of _actually_ going for adult help.

On the way to find him they hit a snag.

"So I tell them Asteria's mother ambushed me--"

Asteria bit her lip and said, "No."

"No?" Harry swung around and stared.

"Look." Asteria crossed her arms and stared, small, slight and unyielding. "I don't want you to - to die, or anyone else, but she's my _mum_. I can't just - anyway I don't know what'll happen to me and Daphne if she goes to Azkaban--"

"We're not asking you to talk to the Aurors," Cho said, looking annoyed but not actually very surprised. "Look. What did you actually _see?_ "

Asteria's eyes narrowed. "I walked out and saw Mum and Harry standing with their wands out - then Mum started talking like it was normal, asking me if I was supposed to be alone, and I went over and - got in between to look at Harry's ankle - it was broken - and said we'd better get Professor Flitwick. Mum tried to get me to leave them alone again to do it - I said he'd give me detention for being alone and suggested she heal Harry's ankle herself, and she did - and then she said she'd walk us back up to the street and left."

"So it doesn't matter, _you_ didn't see anything incriminating anyway," Cho said, and raised a hand when Harry started to protest, "And you know MLE won't - can't, really - indict her when the injury's fixed and there's no proof it was done by a curse or even as bad as Harry thought, and there were no witnesses, and Harry's on the outs with Fudge. So _given all of that_ , I think it's important that we tell the professors everything, so that they can _ensure_ she can't hurt anyone else."

"Okay," Asteria whispered, after several moments of pause.

The afternoon was almost as exhausting as the fight in its own way. Professor Flitwick listened first with mild concern and then alarm; then he raised his wand to make a noise like an immensely loud gong and announced that the Hogsmeade visit was over and all students should return immediately to the castle in a group. Flitwick stayed with them until they found the other supervising professors, Sprout, Vector and Hagrid, to tell them there had been an attempt to kidnap Harry and he was taking him up to the Headmaster to ensure he made it to the castle safely. Only then did Harry manage to get in a word about the Death Eater he had left stunned in the alley behind Madam Puddifoot's. Professor Vector, looking pale, volunteered to go and check if they were still there, with the assistance of Hagrid.

Asteria trailed them miserably through this, arms crossed and head down, until Daphne came running up to them on the way back, frantic and accompanied by a breathless Tracey struggling to keep up. She practically tackled Asteria hugging her and demanded to know if she was alright. As Asteria quietly told her about the kidnapping attempt, she grew reserved and thoughtful.

"You'll need to see the Headmaster?" she said to Harry, and when he nodded said, "Can we meet in the same room as before? If they let us out of the houses. If not, tomorrow after lunch?"

"Yeah, sure," Harry said, slightly mystified and resolving to check with Draco if he thought this was safe first. Daphne seemed alright, but that wasn't proof she was trustworthy.

Professor Flitwick deposited Harry at the foot of the stairs to the Headmaster's office and asked if he was comfortable informing Professor Dumbledore what had happened himself, then rushed off, barely waiting for an affirmative reply. Harry gave the password and ascended, leaving Cho and Asteria behind, and feeling rather as though he had been swept off his feet by a rampaging thestral.

"Ah, Harry," Dumbledore said, looking up when he opened the door. Then, taking in Harry's state, he asked with considerably more alarm, "What has happened?"

"Asteria and Daphne Greengrass's mother just tried to kidnap me in Hogsmeade, sir," Harry said, collapsing into the chair in front of the desk and only realizing then how much he had longed, for the past hour, to sit down. "Professor Flitwick's handling it - he called all the students back to the castle and got the other supervising professors to deal with securing the village while he took me up, sir."

"One moment, please," Dumbledore said, rising. "--Is anyone else hurt?"

"Not as far as I know. I mean, I Stunned another Death Eater, but Professor Vector and Hagrid were checking if they were still there," Harry said, watching Dumbledore go to the fireplace and throw a handful of Floo powder in, then kneel to put his head through.

"MLE shall be arriving shortly," Dumbledore said then, straightening. "They will proceed to Hogsmeade first, to ensure the situation is secure, so we should have some time to discuss the matter. If you would proceed...?"

Harry felt rather like an idiot when he explained how Mrs. Greengrass had managed to get him alone and isolated in the middle of Hogsmeade, but Dumbledore only nodded, gravely, and continued to listen. The whole account took only a minute or two, unlike many of Harry's misadventures. There had been very few complications this time.

"--And Asteria didn't want to tell anyone it was her Mum but Cho convinced her it wasn't like she'd seen anything incriminating anyway, so she didn't argue when we told Professor Flitwick Mrs. Greengrass had done it," Harry finished. "Sir, is that true? Even though she attacked me in public?"

Dumbledore looked grave. "I don't wish to say for sure what will happen, but it is very likely true, yes. 

"Ulrike Selwyn - she returned to using her maiden name socially when she was widowed, as it happens - was the wife of a convicted Death Eater, Pandion Greengrass, who died in Azkaban in the early eighties. Her social ties to Lord Voldemort's followers are very well known. She was a close friend of Bellatrix Lestrange. A third woman in their circle was an in-law of hers through her birth family, Devana Selwyn, and was killed in the war serving Voldemort. I admit I had not been certain that Ulrike Selwyn was herself a Death Eater, as most of those arrested were men, but the idea that she has been in contact with Madam Lestrange since her escape last spring will surprise few. 

"Had we a reasonable Minister, we could at least bring her to trial and attempt to obtain a conviction, but given the composition of the Wizengamot accusing a respectable widow of a violent crime would be difficult under any circumstances, and with Fudge predisposed to believe that your godfather is attempting to undermine him..." Dumbledore smiled tiredly and opened his hands. "Still, MLE will search, and perhaps they will find some corroborating evidence. In the meantime, Harry, I am afraid you can probably guess the additional bad news I am about to give you."

"I probably shouldn't go to Hogsmeade again," Harry said. He had not thought of it yet, but phrased like this it was obvious. "Not now that someone tried to kidnap me there."

"Indeed." Dumbledore inclined his head. "If you wish, you may be allowed to visit your godfather at home via the school Floo instead, I think; it seems like a reasonable substitute for the privilege of leaving school grounds, and a more secure one so long as no one knows to find you there. I will contact him to arrange it if you are amenable." 

"Yeah, sure," Harry said, startled; he had not expected any substitute to be offered. "Uh, can I go, then?"

"I will call you when MLE arrives and wishes to speak to you," Dumbledore confirmed. "Please do not leave the castle walls until such time as I confirm it is safe."

Harry left, not feeling terribly reassured.

He went to Gryffindor first and was relieved to see Ron and Hermione already present, looking around anxiously for him. "Harry, did you see what happened?" Hermione asked, twisting her hands anxiously. "We were in the Three Broomsticks when we heard the announcement--"

"It was me," Harry said tiredly. "Ulrike Selwyn - she's the Greengrass girls' mum - tried to kidnap me, but her youngest daughter walked in and got in the way. I'm not allowed to go to Hogsmeade anymore, and Dumbledore says I need to stay inside the castle walls until he tells me otherwise."

He caught them up quickly and confirmed that students in general had not been confined to the common rooms before telling them about Daphne's invitation. Ron was skeptical, but Hermione and Harry persuaded him that they should at least check if Draco thought meeting her was a good idea before dismissing it. Some investigation located Draco in the library, where he agreed that they should at least hear Daphne out and walked with them downstairs.

They opened the door to the same student lounge as yesterday with four - no, five occupants: Asteria, Daphne and Tracey, and Carya, who was carrying a small baby in a shawl in her lap. Harry blinked. This must be Irene.

Draco went inside first and sat down unhesitatingly. "So, I assume Aster's told you both what happened?"

"I know this is probably useless," Carya said, eyes down and focused on her daughter, "But I'm _very_ sorry about Mum."

Harry opened his mouth and closed it again. The fact that he would not have remotely considered blaming Ulrike Selwyn's children for her actions warred with his indignation at the way Carya sounded as though she was apologizing for a parent merely being rude.

"You don't sound terribly surprised," Hermione said caustically, sitting down next to Harry.

Carya and Daphne exchanged glances. Asteria rocked slightly in her chair, staring at her lap.

"That's because we aren't," Daphne said crisply, at last. 

"Bellatrix Lestrange is our godmother," Carya said. "All four of us, Aster was born about a month before the Lestranges were arrested. Her christening was probably the last time they made a formal public appearance. Myrina - she's eldest - is the only one who really _remembers_ her, she was seven and a half then, but she and Mum both wrote to Bellatrix in prison. And..." She hesitated then.

"And we know Mum's been in contact with Bellatrix," Daphne said. "We haven't _seen_ her or anything, but there are only so many reasons Mum would suddenly have all these meetings over the summer, and come home with new things and pay for repairs that have been untouched for ages... We bought my school things _new_ this year."

"She asked me and Myrina if either of us wanted to divorce," Carya said, shrugging. "It was obvious she suddenly had a major source of funding, and with the timing..."

"You didn't tell _me_ this," Asteria said.

"We didn't want to worry you," Daphne said.

"We didn't want to drag you into it," Carya said. 

Irene made a cooing sound and lifted a hand, reaching for her mother’s face, and Carya bent down to kiss her forehead, avoiding any response from Asteria.

"She should probably go home with you for Christmas, Lady Carrow won't let anyone hurt her," Daphne added to Carya. "I mean, Aster's a bit spacey but Mum knows she's not _stupid_ , she’ll guess Aster knew.”

"I'm _not running away_ ," Asteria said, folding her arms. When her sisters both objected to this statement at once she said, "Anyway it would be stupid, it would be like admitting I'd done something wrong, and it's not like I can just avoid her for the next _four years_ until I grow up."

"She should have been in Gryffindor with Myrina," Daphne said, looking slightly despairing.

"She's too ruthless to be in Gryffindor," Carya said, snorting.

Silence fell for a moment.

"Don't take this the wrong way," Hermione said, turning cool eyes on Daphne and Carya, "But we should trust you why, exactly, knowing this?"

The sisters exchanged glances again, but it was Tracey who put a hand on Daphne's shoulder and said, "Mostly because of me, I suppose." When they all looked at her in surprise she said, "You know how me and Daphne are dating? I'm like you, Granger, I'm a mudblood."

"You said you were _mixed_ ," Draco said, sounding startled.

"Wouldn't you? It's what most people assume," she added to the Gryffindors. "There are a few Davis families in magical Britain, and the Dav _ies_ , it's a common name. One of the first things I heard in Slytherin was people mocking you our first year - sorry, but it's true - and I figured I'd keep my head down. I wound up friends with Daphne and tried to do what she did, and eventually she found out and said she'd help me keep it secret. I mean, for all I know I _am_ halfblood, my father died when I was little, but I don't actually know."

"It didn't seem fair, for people to be horrible to my best friend for that, and Mum always taught me I was supposed to defend what was mine," Daphne said calmly. "Then I fell in love with her later, of course." Glancing at Carya, she added, "Sorry I didn't warn you before this conversation."

Carya lifted Irene in her arms, burying her face in her daughter’s short, fuzzy hair, and mumbled, "Mum is going to go spare, you know."

"Only if she finds out," Daphne said.

"Daphne, she's got Bellatrix Lestrange coming around for tea, she's _going_ to find out," Carya said. "If nothing else, you realize by the time you go home for the summer you'll be sixteen and they'll ask you to take the mark if he's back?"

"Girls have to show interest--"

" _Married_ girls have to show interest," Carya said. "On account of the need to reproduce the pureblood population. Does Mum know you're gay? She must know you don't want to get married since she hasn't been _looking_."

The conversation no longer seemed to have much to do with them, but there was no subtle way to leave.

"She knows I'm gay," Daphne said after a long pause. Tracey made a small, stifled noise, and she went on, "She doesn't know I've got a girlfriend - I mean, okay, she's probably guessed it's you if I have one, but she thinks you're a halfblood. It's probably fine."

"So you'll take the mark and keep lying, then?" Carya said sarcastically. 

"Well, if it buys me time--"

"You have to kill to do it," Harry said. The sound of his own voice, low and intense, surprised him. Daphne jumped. He went on before they could speak, "Sirius ran away because he was warned they'd ask him, by someone who thought he would refuse to kill even if it meant dying. So are you willing to murder someone for him to buy yourself time? Because if you are, I'm not sure how much if matters if you mean it or not. Especially to the people you'll kill."

"Potter--" It was Tracey who looked ready to leap down his throat, but Daphne put a hand over hers and she quieted. 

There was a tense silence, broken only when Irene babbled something that brought everyone's attention to her. She was smiling, apparently oblivious to the tension in the room.

"No," Daphne said, looking at Harry and raising her chin. "I'm not willing to kill for him to keep hiding. Thank you for... clarifying the matter," she added with a small, cryptic smile that made Carya snort.

"Then maybe _neither_ of you should go home," Hermione said.

Daphne shook her head, then shrugged. "I'll tell Mum I want to have children and ask her to find a gay boy, I suppose," she said. "I assume the need to produce pureblood children doesn't depend on me being attracted to my prospective husband on _his_ merits. Pity Draco's gone blood traitor - no offense."

"None taken, Miss Greengrass, but I do prefer _Mr._ Blood Traitor," Draco said in his poshest accent, making them all laugh, the baby joining them.

Daphne turned to touch her niece’s cheek and said, looking less white around the lips, "She'll believe that of me - I mean, she knows I worry over Aster and I help with Irene and Marco and baby Antiope - and it's plausible. If she has money now the engagement won't have to be immediate, so that should buy me some time while she looks, and while I wait for the wedding. I doubt they'll want me to marry without graduating. I only really need another year, I turn seventeen February after next and after that it's none of her affair where I live and I can break my own engagement if I can weather the fuss. Uncle Argus is the head of the family, and he hardly _wants_ any of us to join up after what happened to Cousin Antiope."

"What happened to Cousin Antiope?" Tracey asked before anyone else had to.

Daphne looked at Carya, who said, "Antiope was Uncle Argus's eldest daughter. She was a Death Eater - or well, I'm not sure if she had taken the mark or anything, but she was a researcher and she had actually co-authored papers with the Dark Lord and with Bellatrix. She was arrested in 1981, before the end of the war, and MLE claimed she killed herself in her cell. But they also claimed she'd done it by hanging herself with the sheets, and they don't put sheets on the cots in MLE's cells, so even if it was true it was still engineered on purpose. Myrina and Taran named their daughter after her, she was born last year."

"Which I always thought was funny," Daphne said, "Since Myrina was the first one who tried to get _us_ to look at blood purity with 'scientific detachment,' but maybe it was Taran's idea or something."

Tracey sighed. "It's not like you have to agree with You-Know-Who to think killing a prisoner without a trial and claiming it was suicide is wrong, Daffy Daphne."

"Don't be absurd, Trace," Daphne said. "Purebloods don't have morals."

" _You're_ pureblood."

"Yes, exactly," Daphne said. Her girlfriend pulled her scarf up over her mouth, and they engaged in a brief struggle on their couch.

"So this is your - son or daughter?" Hermione asked Carya, trying to ignore the giggling.

Carya had been watching her sister and her sister's girlfriend with a look of worried fondness, but she looked up then. "Yes, she was born over the summer. I'm married, so I'm allowed a private room as accommodation while she's too young to be separated from me." Carya hesitated. "Do you want to hold her?"

"Absolutely, she's lovely," Hermione said, taking the baby without hesitation. "What's her name?"

"Irene," Carya said quietly. "You know, like the goddess of peace. Asbolus and I wanted..." Her voice trailed off. She looked up at her sisters: one laughing on her back on the floor while her muggleborn girlfriend tried to stuff her braid into her mouth to gag her, and the other curled around her knees on the other side of the room, face still white with fear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoyed this? [Reblog it on tumblr](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/637401856225804288/the-glass-fortress-chpt-15-the-attack), or just come talk to me!


	17. Nautilus

Harry was beginning to feel oddly as though they were intruding on the Greengrass sisters, but it didn't matter. He needed to be easily located when MLE wanted their interview, and it had been a half hour, so they would probably come for him soon. They packed up and left the room. Daphne and Tracey noticed them leaving when they were almost out the door and got up, straightening their clothing in a hurry. As a group, they went up to the library. Harry hadn't expected the Greengrass sisters to come, but Carya pointed out MLE was definitely going to want to talk to Asteria, and the rest of them didn't want to leave her alone. ("I can insist on being there for the actual interview, too, I'm her sister and I'm of age," she added.) 

They took over one of the largest tables near the back. As most students wanted to loudly discuss the attack on Hogsmeade or were still warming up by common room fires, the library was half empty. Madam Pince eyed Carya threateningly, but she wearily said, "I promise I'll leave if Irene starts crying, Madam Librarian," and was allowed in.

Hermione got her reading for Arithmancy, and Daphne took out a piece of parchment and began, she said, drafting her request to her mother for an equally gay husband ("I won't send it now, obviously, but there's no harm having something ready once a suitable amount of time has passed"), but none of them could focus easily on work. Daphne and Carya kept trying to reassure Asteria that the interview would be fine, she wasn't suspected of anything. Knowing that their cousin had apparently died mysteriously in MLE custody, and after what had happened to Sirius, Harry couldn't exactly blame them. Hermione and Ron were shooting worried looks at him, presumably because of the kidnapping. Draco seemed torn between joining worry over either Asteria or Harry, or both.

"Pardon me, this is probably a rude question," Hermione said at last, when they had been through three or four rounds of the same empty attempts at reassuring remarks. "But you said your mother _knows_ you're a lesbian? Even though she's - quite conservative?"

"Their definition of social conservatism is _really_ not the muggle one," Tracey said.

"We know about Cassiopeia Black - you know, the portrait over there?" Ron said, nodding in the general direction of Cassiopeia's portrait by the Restricted Section. "And the Blacks killed her because they found out she was gay."

"Cassiopeia Black? Really?" Daphne asked, looking impressed. "I'll have to bring that up next time someone makes a snide comment about me at Uncle Argus’s house. But um - there are definitely families who care, but not ours, at least not that much. Cousin Antiope kind of had all of those fights for me before I was born, so was she."

"Is there something specific about lesbians and Dark magic?" Hermione asked, starting to look amused.

"Not getting married at sixteen and dying in labor after fifteen pregnancies in thirteen years?" Daphne said. "--Sorry, Carya."

Carya snorted. "That's why I married a Carrow instead of a Rosier or a Weasley - sorry, no offense intended."

Ron's ears were pink, but he muttered, "S'fine."

"I guess you could say something about disregarding social convention, too," Tracey said thoughtfully. 

"--Anyway, Mum was on Antiope's side, apparently. She got into a fight with her father and either stormed out or he threw her out - I’ve heard both - and after that she lived with Mum and our father before she died, in the seventies - and it's not like they were going to execute a Death Eater in her bed and bring down the Dark Lord on their heads," Carya said. "Apparently it was a real thing in pureblood society for a few years, joining him just so that you could get away with spiting your parents."

"And no big deal about all the murder," Harry said. 

Carya closed her mouth awkwardly, but before the conversation could be rescued Professor McGonagall swept into the library. "Excuse me, Madam Pince," she said, moving past her, "--Ah, here you are. Mr. Potter, Miss Greengrass," she nodded to Asteria, "You're wanted in the headmaster's office - ah, Mrs. Carrow, I suppose you can come as well."

The interview with MLE was awkward. Harry had not really hoped for Amelia herself, but he had half-wished for Tonks. Instead Auror Shacklebolt, Moody's final assistant from his first class, arrived. Asteria and Carya both looked immediately reassured by this, to Harry's surprise. It was explained a few moments later when he added, "And yes, your aunt Delia would be my aunt, too, we're cousins by marriage. Go ahead and sit down, there's no need to get worked up about it. Mr. Potter, would you mind starting?"

Feeling Carya and Asteria's eyes hard on him, Harry went from when he had gone to the toilet in Madam Puddifoot's through the veiled witch coming in the back and drawing her wand, through their fight and the second Death Eater, to her nearly killing him and being interrupted by Asteria coming out a shop door. He hesitated here, but Auror Shacklebolt urged him to continue so he told him that Asteria had greeted her as her mother and as much of the conversation as he could remember before Ulrike had left.

"Very good," Auror Shacklebolt said, making a few notes. "Had you seen a veiled witch anywhere before that?"

Harry frowned - he hadn't thought of it before. Searching his memories he said, "Maybe - yeah, I did! She was in Elegant Enchantments, the jeweler’s - I was Christmas shopping," he added.

"I'll check with the shopkeeper and see if she remembers anything else, but that should help. Now, Miss Greengrass, is that what you saw?"

Asteria falteringly admitted to running into her mother, but insisted that she hadn't seen any fight. They had been a ways up the alley from Madam Puddifoot's, so she had no idea if someone had been collapsed outside the shop. She had not heard the incantation her mother used to heal Harry's ankle.

"Miss Greengrass," Auror Shacklebolt said gently, "It sounds like you were very determined not to leave your mother alone with Mr. Potter. Is there any reason for that?"

"I." Asteria rocked slightly, hugging herself, and Carya started forward, but Asteria shook her head determinedly and said, "I _don't_ know what happened, but I know about - about Dad and what happened to him. So I was worried. About Harry. But I didn't see anything!"

"Worried that she might hurt him?" Shacklebolt said, but Asteria clammed up and wouldn't say another word; after a few minutes, he sighed and told Carya to go ahead and take her downstairs, and get her a Calming Draught.

"Well, Mr. Potter," he said after they had left, "Unfortunately we didn't find the other Death Eater, although we _did_ uncover traces of a duel, and some scorch marks on the alley walls, as well as some burnt threads consistent with what you said you did to the veil. That was very quick thinking on your part, by the way - you saved your own life just as much as Asteria Greengrass did."

"Thank you, sir," Harry said, face feeling a bit hot. "But - you don't think you'll be able to arrest her?"

"Normally we might," Shacklebolt said, "But what with what happened to the girls' cousin--"

"You mean Antiope Greengrass?" Harry asked.

Shacklebolt raised his eyebrows and nodded. "Unfortunately MLE is a little reluctant to stir up that hornet's nest. Arresting any member of the Greengrass family is going to bring it to the Wizengamot's minds again, and Lucius Malfoy is sure to get Fudge to intervene on the Ministry’s end. But we'll certainly ask if anyone else saw her, and who knows, maybe we'll find something if we search her house. Thank you for your cooperation, you may go, too."

Harry did not have much time to go back to Gryffindor after that. Dumbledore had contacted Sirius about the attempted kidnapping, and he arrived at the castle not long after Harry left Auror Shacklebolt, resulting in his second summons in one day. There wasn't really much for him to do, but he was obviously worried, and Harry was glad to see him, and be swept into a bone-crushing hug.

Once Sirius was reassured that Harry had not been harmed by the duel, only shaken, they had a chance to catch up about other subjects that were unwieldy to put in a letter, and a few he hadn't had a chance to reply about. Harry asked after the werewolf Hermione had written about in particular, and received a wry laugh.

"I'm glad Hermione caught that. Amelia is suspicious, too,” Sirius said.

"I thought she couldn't do anything about Regulation and Control of Creatures?"

"She can't interfere with a werewolf discipline case, but Creatures can't interfere with an active MLE investigation, either - and the murder victim was one of her people. She declared that the investigation wasn't satisfied," Sirius said with evident pleasure, "And of course that jackbooted thug Mulciber tried to rush the execution anyway. So Amelia seized the poor girl as evidence."

"She - _what?_ " Harry said.

Sirius was grinning maliciously. "The Creatures Department says that werewolves aren't people, they're beasts, so they don't have a right to a trial, right? Well, beasts - livestock of any kind - can be seized like any property if they're evidence pertaining to an ongoing investigation. They don't trust Mulciber not to send the executioner straight to her house, or have someone muscle their way into the cells if they put her in protective custody, so she's sleeping in Amelia's office right now. Fortunately the Director of MLE has a sitting room, a toilet and a walk in storage closet."

"How long can they keep that up for, though?" Harry asked.

Sirius shrugged. "Until Amelia declares the investigation satisfied at least, and at that point the rightful owner has to petition to have their property returned if MLE doesn't, and MLE has pretty broad powers to refuse. Not that it's even clear who the 'rightful owner' is. We're hoping Mulciber will try to argue to the court that you obviously can't impound a person, because then we can argue that a person gets a Wizengamot trial and establish a precedent for all werewolves, but he hasn't bitten yet. 

"In the meantime Amelia's had a few appropriately ranked people sitting guard in the front room when she has to go home and sleep and see her family. I've taken a few turns myself with Remus. He's happy, she's a great backgammon player and I'm really not."

Harry carried this news back to Ron and Hermione, thinking that at least he had heard one good thing today.

That Monday, Bill Weasley arrived to help at last remove the Defense curse that had been interfering with Hogwarts staff for thirty years. Harry was summoned by a note after classes, and as Dumbledore had included permission, Ron and Hermione came along. They found that Cho had been sent a separate note as the other student involved with the investigation of the curse last term, and Luna Lovegood in order to open the Room. Luna skipped from the headmaster's office down the steps, somehow failing to trip, radishes dangling from her ears, and opened the door for the rest of them. 

Dumbledore bowed gravely in thanks to Luna before leading the way. The focus for the Defense curse led in an entirely different direction from the place they had found the diadem Horcrux; or perhaps the room had only rearranged itself. They wound their way around mountainous piles for several minutes before coming to the spot.

It was immediately obvious that something was different, here, for there was a clear space in the vast swathes of piled junk, a circle thirty feet in diameter where no objects lay. Instead the wooden floor was bare, and a diagram had been painted on it in thick black lines. The base of the shape was an immense, widening spiral, like the nautilus shells they had used in Potions once or twice. The entirety of the open space within the lines of the spiral was filled up with cramped text, written in letters half an inch high, in a script Harry did not recognize. More words were written on top of the thick line of the spiral in white, and as Harry came closer he saw a second spiral formed entirely out of words, intertwined with and overlapping the first and cutting through the main text.

Harry had thought that he could try to identify the alphabet if he got close enough, but as he approached the clear space in the pathway his head began to pound and his vision blurred. There was a waver in the air over the diagram, as though there was smoke or intense heat. The text swam when he set his eyes on it.

"Well," Bill said, dropping his box of supplies on the path with a thunk. "Here we are."

"Breathtaking, in its way," Dumbledore said, looking over the diagram. "Do not approach it closely unless we tell you it is safe."

There wasn't much for any of them to do but watch for a while. Bill and Dumbledore discussed their approach in jargon that Harry found incomprehensible, though Hermione was paying close attention. The rest of them wandered off a few feet. There was quite a lot of other stuff in the room to look at while they waited, and Harry could now generally identify whether an object was potentially cursed from practice with the Black library, so it made a good enough distraction. He glanced up occasionally and saw Bill and Dumbledore casting spells he did not recognize, or sketching diagrams on parchment with serious faces, and assumed that the angle of attack was still under discussion. He wondered if this would turn into another six month project on its own, and if the curse might claim yet another victim before it could be dislodged.

A flash of light made Harry spin around from examining an ancient looking broom, wand in hand. He had been twitchy the last few days. He turned in time to see Dumbledore, wand extended, cast a second spell. There was a sound like a thunderclap, and a ball of light floated out to the diagram, then exploded a few feet away.

"Harry, please come here," the Headmaster called, voice slightly strained.

Wondering, Harry approached. The others trailed over as well.

"It appears that Voldemort was able to influence the protective enchantments on the school to treat the curse as a fundamental part of the school's magic," Dumbledore said. "This also caused them to extend their protections to the curse's focus. We must alter the protections on the school in order to disassemble it."

"But - isn't that nearly impossible?" Hermione said.

"Under most circumstances," Bill said. "But Harry was able to contact the school last year, and we're hoping he might be able to do it again."

"I only saw the school for a few seconds," Harry objected.

"Nevertheless the contact was made," Dumbledore said. "We must try, and if you are not initially able, devise a method by which you may become so."

"No, I mean - what am I actually supposed to do?" Harry said.

Bill and Dumbledore explained as well as they could, with occasional interjections from Hermione, who had apparently read nearly everything published and generally available on the subject of Hogwarts. Powerful magic often took on a degree of self awareness, and this trait could be encouraged, although most of the techniques for creating an artifact with its own mind deliberately were restricted or lost entirely. Buildings with many powerful enchantments, and which were in long term use, were particularly likely to gain personalities, and Hogwarts Castle was known to be one of them. 

However, while the castle often reacted to events within it - ranging from doors that would only open if you were polite to them to its notorious tendency to expel anyone who entered with the intention of harming students - there was no direct method of communicating with Hogwarts known. It had been thought that that key had been lost long ago, or perhaps tied to the bloodlines of the Founders.

"So it's Parseltongue," Harry said.

"So _one_ key is Parseltongue," Bill said. "And we're not really sure what we want you to do, but it's possible that just talking to the castle will be enough. If it doesn't answer, or it does and doesn't help, let us know and we'll come up with something else."

It was not exactly comforting to see that Dumbledore had no more idea what to do than him, but this was at least a clear first step. Harry sat down on a nearby trunk with several planks missing from its side, and let his mind's eye drift so that he viewed the magic of the room. Looking at magic in Hogwarts, particularly without a specific object at hand, was a bit like staring at an erupting volcano or something, and the inside of the Room of Requirement was worse. But slowly Harry managed to narrow his gaze down, not to the identifiable threads of the Defense curse, but the glimmering tapestry of interwoven spells they had been integrated into.

Just like before, once he had focused on the wards, their resemblance to the swaying and slithering of a snake came to mind. Harry opened his mouth and carefully hissed, "Hello?"

The enchantments did not speak, but again he seemed to be rushing out of his body. The castle and grounds were laid out before him. Unlike last time, Harry was prepared. He realized that he wasn't seeing them, precisely, at least not as he would with his eyes. He did not seem to have a body, for example, but was aware of everything around the point in space where his consciousness hovered, and every floor of the castle at once. As his awareness expanded further, from the Headmaster in the Room of Requirement into all of the people throughout the castle and the feeling of the fortress walls themselves, Harry tried to ground himself. He was supposed, he reminded himself, to be talking to the castle.

"Hello, Hogwarts?" he called again. He was not sure if he was speaking Parseltongue. Indeed, he was not sure if he had spoken aloud at all, since he didn't seem to have a body.

But there was an answer, this time, a sort of feeling of greeting, and although he heard no words he knew what the castle had said: _Hello, Salazar_.

"I'm not him, you know," Harry said, feeling wrong footed, and immediately regretted it; what if they spat him out, or thought he was an impostor?

He thought that the castle might be laughing at him. This time he had a sense of a correction, a greeting issued again that did not quite line up with English words, something like, _Hello, Salazar's son._

Harry decided that this was not worth getting into. Instead he pictured the Defense curse carefully, trying to push it towards the presence emanating answers towards him, the way he would enter someone's mind with Legilimency. There was a stillness, a reaction, and he knew he had succeeded, at least in telling the castle what he wanted to talk about.

"We need to remove it," he said carefully. He thought about trying to explain that it was hurting anyone who tried to teach the children about Defense, but this seemed like a complicated prospect and one the castle might have any number of reactions to, so instead he said only, "Can you stop protecting it?"

The castle had an objection - not angry or heated, only puzzled and uncertain. _We were told it was necessary to keep the children safe._ With that notion came the castle's understanding of the curse: it was supposed to take action against anyone who taught dangerous magic to the students and encouraged them to hurt others, by opening the minds of the people around that professor to the threat they posed.

Hermione would no doubt find this very interesting later, but Harry was starting to feel exhausted, even though he did not have a body with which to feel. "It isn't working," he said. "It's hurting innocent people. We need to take it down. Can you stop protecting it?"

The castle considered the matter. It reviewed what it knew about the curse. Then it turned all of its immense, ancient regard on Harry and said, _We will_.

Harry woke, flat on his back in the Room, with a splitting headache. He was grinning broadly, even as he rubbed his temples and sat up, even as his vision wavered. "Try it now," he said, and promptly fainted.

Harry woke up a few hours later in the hospital wing with Ron, Hermione and Cho. There was also a vase of leggy flowers on the side table he knew at once had come from Hagrid. "They did it!" Hermione said, passing him a glass of water. "Bill and Dumbledore removed the curse. It took two hours, but they said it was all fairly logical and straightforward once the castle stopped protecting the focus."

"You're going to get credit for helping," Cho said, and squeezed his hand. "They said they want to ask you about it, too, people have been trying to get in touch with Hogwarts for hundreds of years."

"Bill was really impressed," Ron added, "He went on for ages about what a great chance it was to be able to help. I think Dumbledore was, too. They went over the castle after and those black threads we spent months following are all unraveling or vanished. Though I guess we won't have proof unless Moody makes it through the whole year without an accident."

"Really we won't know until the next professor makes it to their second year, since he never wanted to stay," Hermione added, but she was grinning. It was clear that they were all confident the curse had been dealt with at last.

"Why'd I pass out?" Harry asked.

They exchanged glances.

"Dumbledore thinks the castle was... he said 'overenthusiastic,’” Cho said.

"It hadn't spoken to anyone - well, anyone but Voldemort - in a really long time," Hermione added. "He thinks it probably missed the social contact."

"It flattened you like Fang jumping on us when we've been gone for the whole summer," Ron translated.

"He said it might try to talk to you again, but it shouldn't be so, er, rude next time," Hermione said.

Madam Pomfrey fussed, but reluctantly admitted that the headmaster had said that Harry could leave when he woke up as long as he otherwise felt all right, and after Harry insisted repeatedly that he did, permitted them to go. Harry had missed dinner, so while Cho went up to Ravenclaw, the rest of them decided to hurry down to the kitchens before curfew so that he could get some food.

"Then I want to work on my Transfiguration essay," Hermione said, anxiously pushing her hair back, "There were a few citations I think I missed in my second paragraph--"

"Didn't you finish that Friday night?" Ron asked, yawning.

"I just want to make sure it's complete! You should look yours over, too--"

Ron was shaking his head. "Sorry, forgot - Bill asked me to come talk to him before he goes, just because I don't see him much," he said, blushing slightly. "I said I'd go up when Harry was awake and I knew he was alright - you two don't mind--"

They assured Ron that they didn't, even though in Harry's case this meant being the sole target of Hermione's continuous monologue on the fascinating Curse-Breaking methods employed while he was unconscious for the entire walk up from the kitchens to Gryffindor, Ron having left by a different route.

They got up to Gryffindor about a half hour before curfew, so Ron could not be absent long. Harry cut off Hermione's lecture by saying truthfully that he wanted to look over his Charms questions for tomorrow morning and rapidly got his homework out. Harry had missed a full night between the Curse-Breaking and passing out, and thanks to the kidnapping attempt Saturday had done very little work over the weekend, so he had plenty of work to do, unfortunately. 

Ron arrived twenty minutes later or so, by which time Harry was engrossed in looking up the anatomy of the parasitic plant family they were studying in Herbology and only muttered a vague greeting as he flipped in a panic sort of way through the glossary of his textbook. He was roused from his state of homework panic a while later by his friends' voices, which were growing louder and tenser. 

It was a half hour to midnight, and the common room was emptying out slowly. Harry’s Herbology work for the week was done, but he still had some reading he had told Snape he would complete on Legilimency for tomorrow evening to take out. Harry bent over his bag.

"--just, you know Mum takes the papers seriously and he wanted to ask if she was bothering me, you know," Ron was saying tersely, hunched in his chair.

"Well, she hasn't been, has she?" Hermione's voice had a certain strident pitch that it always got when she was angry or upset. "I mean I know there was the - the Howler, but there was only the one..."

"She's just been writing, that's all, since," Ron muttered, pink faced. "Like Percy - I'd wonder if she put him to that but they've always been alike when they think you're misbehaving--"

They must be talking about Mrs. Weasley, Harry thought, stomach prickling uneasily. He wondered if things would be easier now if he had visited her over the summer as he had before, or if she would not have had them after the Easter argument about her mother, and Lucretia coming to stay in Sirius's parents' house.

"Exactly _what_ has she been writing?" Hermione snapped.

Ron muttered something inaudible,then said before Hermione could snap at him to speak up, "Look, she thinks you wouldn't make a - a good wife, okay? I _think_ I got her to believe Skeeter was spewing rubbish - it's not like she doesn't lie about Dad whenever he comes up in the papers, Mum should've known - but she started on about how you're too ambitious and she's read about how muggle career women neglect their families--"

Hermione made a furious noise.

"--But I told her that was rubbish," Ron said hastily. "She knows they make stuff up about muggles in the witches' papers, just to sell stories, just like what Skeeter does, right? So I said I was sure it wasn't true and you had nothing against having kids, or anything - which you don't, right? You liked Irene--"

"I'm _sixteen_ , Ron, I'm not making decisions about children!"

This had been too loud; Harry saw people's heads starting to turn,

"It's not like she thinks you'd be having them now," Ron said hastily. "It's just where her mind goes whenever anyone brings someone home - Charlie was seeing some student at the preserve in Romania and she went spare, saying she wouldn't have him marrying some girl who was just as happy to sleep in a tent-"

"I _told you_ Andromeda's training me to help with the Black seat," Hermione said, dropping her voice again to whisper furiously.

"Well, yeah, but it's not like you'll need to do that _forever_ , is it?" Ron said. "I mean, they think Lucius Malfoy's going to disown Draco, don't they, so even if Sirius doesn't marry and have kids because of Professor Lupin Draco will, they'll have enough people to run the family sooner or later. And they can always hire people on, the Blacks have loads of vassals. So there's no reason you can't run a household eventually. Hopefully Mum believes it."

"You're making a rather hasty assumption there," Hermione said coldly, slamming her textbook shut. "Even if I _did_ want to 'run a household' instead of working, it wouldn't be _yours_ , Ronald."

"What?" Ron said, looking rather wrong footed. "I didn't mean - we're dating, Hermione! Of course it's what Mum's thinking--"

"Not anymore, we aren't!" Hermione snarled, swung her bag over her shoulder, and stalked up the girls' staircase.

"What?" Ron said again. "Hermione!" But she didn't turn, and Ron finally dropped back into his chair after people began to whisper.

"What did _I_ do?" he said furiously. " _Completely_ mad - just trying to defend her--"

Harry mumbled something inarticulate and bent his head over the Legilimency textbook furiously, hoping to avoid having to attempt an answer to that question.

Ron insisted on Tuesday morning that Hermione would have calmed down overnight. Harry did not venture an opinion on this, instead rapidly changing the subject to when the Quidditch schedules would be rearranged again in the spring, but it was a moot point because Hermione wasn't at breakfast. As they grew nearer to leaving for Charms, Harry and Ron begun to worry, until Parvati, lips pursed, told them that Hermione had left the dorm early and had probably already eaten. (She also told Ron that he should apologize; Ron snapped at her.)

Harry waited until Parvati and Ron were entrenched in bickering before leaving the table quietly; he wanted a chance to talk to Hermione without Ron hovering. Sure enough, he found her in the Charms corridor, sitting in a window nook with her Potions textbook open on her knees

"Hermione," he said quietly.

Hermione looked up. She had been coldly angry last night, but now it was obvious that she had been crying recently. Her eyes were red and her cheeks puffy. "If you're going to tell me to give him another chance--"

"I'm not," Harry said. "Can I sit?"

Hermione hesitantly moved over to give him a seat on the window bench.

"I'm sorry," Harry said, carefully, trying to figure out what to say. "I hope he grows up a bit."

"I kept thinking he would," Hermione said. "For ages and ages, every time he..." She sniffled.

"What, for the last two months?" Harry said, feeling a bit confused.

"Before that, too," Hermione said, and suddenly she was crying into his shoulder. “I thought - I always thought - it just seemed so _obvious_ that we would--”

"I'm sorry," Harry said, awkwardly patting her hair. "He's not... trying to be cruel."

"I know," Hermione said, muffled. "I know, but he does it anyway."

They heard a door slam open down the hall and looked up to see Ron staring furiously at them. He had just flung the Charms classroom door open so hard it bounced against the wall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I've said before in replies to comments, the trio will be friends at the end of the series. But the fact that Harry and Ron didn't have the fight over the Triwizard Tournament in fourth year means some of the things Ron realized about their friendship then haven't happened here yet. I'm extrapolating Harry's reaction to Ron and Hermione's problems based off of his reactions eg. after the Yule Ball in GoF and when they're fighting in HBP.
> 
> Liked this? [Reblog it](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/638068282516242432/the-glass-fortress-chpt-16-nautilus) or come talk to me on tumblr!


	18. Regulations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple of lines in this chapter are adapted from GoF chapter 19 and HBP chapter 15.

After that, Ron did not seem to be speaking to either of them. He sat down pointedly with Lavender in the Charms room and began talking to her loudly about their homework, and when Harry tried to catch him during break stomped off without a word. He had not calmed down by dinner, and Harry began to realize Ron had decided he had taken Hermione’s side already, and was prepared to fume for some time. Harry did not exactly enjoy this, but he felt Hermione’s need was greater right now, and anyway, Ron was the one who was refusing to speak to Harry.

At the same time, Harry had to admit life involved more studying and less fun when Hermione was your only best friend. O.W.L.s were aggravating the situation; it had been easier to coax Hermione into a game of Exploding Snap or to take a walk around the castle in previous years, when she felt less urgency about exams months away.

December arrived with heavy snowfall and heavier homework loads, as teachers rushed through everything they had meant to cover before Christmas break. The one good side to this was that Ron's Prefect duties had been intensified as well, and he wasn't often around to glower at Harry and Hermione in the common room or make cutting remarks. Parvati told them, sounding exhausted, that Filch had somehow gotten the idea that the holiday spirit would manifest in a spat of illegal dueling and required the Prefects to patrol the corridors after hours just in case, along with supervising decoration of the castle and the first and second years' indoor breaks.

Harry was starting to become worried about Hermione. She had buried herself in more work than he would have thought possible. In addition to completing all of the fifth year homework assignments and supplemental readings and writing a good foot extra on most essays, reading the _Daily Prophet_ cover to cover and doing what she said was extra research on legislation in magical Britain for her projects with Andromeda from the summer, she was immersing herself in various books about the construction of computers and their programming and logic sent to her by Dean's stepmother, along with further reading on prophecies. She was often found sprawled on the floor in the common room when she was not in the library, where she had space around her to reference six books at once. She was also exchanging long, scroll-length letters with various people, including Dean's stepmother, a witch she said was a German expert on the coordination of magic with muggle technology, her cousin Rachel, and Viktor Krum. 

In moderation this all would have been normal Hermione behavior, but it was reaching a slightly ridiculous height in Harry's opinion. She was taking books or letters to meals and nearly forgetting to finish her food, and rather than going to bed earlier, finished with her assignments, she tended to work in the common room after he went to sleep and have already arrived there when he got up.

"This is absurd," Draco said, coming over to Gryffindor Sunday at lunch time and watching Hermione scribbling halfway through a scroll of parchment with one hand, absently stuffing a roll in her mouth with the other. "She's going to make herself ill."

"I think it might be time for an intervention," said Dean, who was half-aware of all of this as his stepmother was involved. 

He and Draco looked at each other then, apparently surprised to be in agreement, until Draco said, "A what?"

"It's a muggle thing, I think?" Harry said.

"Yeah, it's when you think someone's screwing up their life so you get their family and friends together and have a meeting to get them to stop," Dean said. "Know anywhere good for it?"

"We could go back to that lounge on the fifth floor," said Cho, who had been keeping Harry company at meals more often lately.

"I'm not sure that's a good idea," Harry said cautiously, shooting a glance at the apparently oblivious Hermione. "She usually just doubles down if you tell her she's wrong, she'd probably storm out again."

"We could take her bag," said Cho. "And not give it back."

"Then she'd kill us," Harry said. "She's got a pretty good Severing Curse."

"No, I've got it," Draco said. "We just need her to think we're the ones who need _her_ help. And as it happens I do anyway. Harry, get her to meet me by the stairs to the dungeons at two, alright? Just the three of us."

"Alright," Harry said, slightly mystified. Hermione still seemed to be completely unaware of their conversation.

Hermione was disentangled from her Arithmancy problems with difficulty after lunch, mostly by curiosity about what Draco needed her help with. Unfortunately, Draco brought the news up that the Slytherin student lounge had been taken over by a bunch of third years. There was apparently some sort of schedule for booking space, but you had to use it a day in advance.

"Should we go to the normal library, then?" Hermione asked him.

"No, this is - private," he said, hesitating slightly. "I don't want anyone to overhear... I know, there's a tower room on this side that's usually empty but it's good for talking, it's up a few flights of steps and most people don't think it's worth bothering. And you hear anyone coming from below, it’s not like talking behind a tapestry or something."

Harry and Hermione exchanged glances, but obediently trailed Draco across three corridors and up nearly four flights of creaking spiral stairs. Draco pulled back on a beautiful room, but one dusty and obviously disused. It was filled with golden wood, with a faded but intricate mural of birds on the round walls, fluttering from branch to branch and twittering as they watched the newcomers.

"So what is this about, exactly?" Hermione asked, siphoning dust off of the bench that circled the room and sitting down. "Because it doesn't sound like a homework question."

"No, it's not," Draco said falteringly as they sat beside Hermione. He paused and performed several eavesdropping detection charms Moody had taught them before continuing. "I - look. Hogsmeade weekend before last in October, Mum asked me to meet her so she could tell me some things that were private. I didn't say anything at the time because it didn't matter to - to anyone else, and I was still trying to think... But... I mean, you all know I'm seeing Hannah now."

Harry nodded. He hadn't had a chance to really ask how Hogsmeade had gone before everyone had been called back to the castle in the confusion of the last week, but he had seen Hannah and Draco talking occasionally, so presumably it had not been disastrous.

"How is she doing?" Hermione asked.

Draco shrugged slightly. "She's upset about her mother, of course. And her uncle sent her a formal challenge yesterday--"

"He _really_ did?" Hermione said, appalled.

"Yeah, so I helped her write to Sirius asking him for assistance finding a champion. I imagine someone in the family will help her out," Draco said, not sounding terribly concerned. "But - look, since I'm dating Hannah there's stuff she... has a right to know about me, alright? Especially since we have to think about marriage now we're both nearly sixteen and she's Head."

"I still think we're all far too young," Hermione said, rolling her eyes. "--All right, all right, I concede the point. What is it you don't know how to tell her, then, that your mother told you over the holidays?"

Draco hesitated, staring at his hands. Idly, he shooed a beetle off the bench by his knee. Then he said, "Has anyone mentioned Marius Black to you?"

Harry shook his head, but Hermione said, "He's the family accountant, Andromeda mentioned him once or twice."

"No - well, yes, he is, but he's also a squib," Draco said, steeling himself. "He's my great great-uncle, actually, he was Pollux Black's little brother. Except he's... not really my uncle."

"What do you mean?" Hermione said, but Harry had suddenly remembered something.

"Draco," he said. "Last spring, when I first met your grandmother, Druella, and she did that blood spell to find your mum, she didn't draw it in front of us. She had a vial already drawn, and - and Sirius asked if it should be fresh, but she said it shouldn't matter..."

Draco was nodding. "She's not really my grandmother," he whispered. "Mum's Marius's - Marius and his wife's, who's a _muggle_. It's not like Mum lied to me," he said defensively, "Or she lied to Father - she didn't even know until this year. They - Lord Orion Black, I mean, Sirius's father - took her when she was just a baby when she started doing magic, and they raised her as Bellatrix and Andromeda's little sister. That's why she looks so different from the rest of the family. Sirius met Marius and his wife - her name's Annabelle Cooper, she's my grandmother, I suppose - and it's Annabelle Mum looks like, it was obvious right away." He took a deep breath and said, “So - I’m a halfblood. And Mum’s...” He stopped here, evidently unable to finish.

They exchanged looks.

"Draco," Hermione said cautiously, "It's not like who you are has changed."

"Of course it has!" Draco shouted, face reddening, then added more quietly, "It's not _just_ that I'm a halfblood. Everyone thought Mum was a bastard, since she _doesn't_ look anything like Cygnus Black. Grandmother - Druella - is at least blond and blue eyed, just darker, so the Rosiers and my great-grandmother - Vera Bones Rosier - treated her like she was particularly theirs, because she _wasn't_ a Black. Mum was named after her - Narcissa Vera Black! And I was over at Grandmother Vera's cottage all the time as a child. And it turns out I'm not even _related_ to them."

"Druella must have known that all along, didn't she?" Harry said.

"She says she doesn't care, and Mum _is_ hers too, and so am I," Draco said, sounding miserable, "But I don't know if it helps, because that just means _she_ lied all along. And they want me to talk to Marius and Annabelle - they are my grandparents - and all right, if I do treat them like mine that means Mum was _kidnapped_ as a child, and Grandmother just went along with it and lied about it forever?"

"Did Druella actually have a _choice_ about that?" Hermione asked.

Draco stared at his hands for a moment. "Not really," he admitted, slowly. "She didn't even really have a right to her _own_ daughters, not if Orion Black had taken them from her, and Mum wasn't hers at all. But..."

"Why _did_ they lie? I mean, if your mum - sorry - but if she joined the Death Eaters because she thought she was pureblood..." Harry asked.

"From what Grandmother said, that was sort of why," Draco said, staring at his hands. "They normally tell children like her - I guess she's not the only one who's been taken like that - when they turn sixteen, but by then Aunt Bellatrix had joined the Dark Lord and Mum was hanging around his followers too. I think they were afraid that she would - well, that Aunt Bella might hurt her, or that if not Mum might kill Marius and Annabelle to prove a point, because sometimes halfblood Death Eaters did that to prove their loyalty."

There was a rather horrible silence at this news.

"So you wanted advice about how to tell Hannah?" Hermione said finally. "Do you really need to do it now?"

"Well, before we formalize anything, yes," Draco said, "And it would be extremely unfair to let her become serious without telling her something like that."

"Do you really think she's going to care?" Harry asked. "I mean, her family are pretty liberal, aren't they?"

"Perhaps not," Draco admitted. "But it's still her right to decide that. I really wanted to practice, I think, before I spoke to her about it." He scrubbed at his face, which was still very pink. "I'd never had to tell anyone before - I tried to pretend it hadn't happened back in October - and I didn't want the first time to be with a girl I might be betrothed to. It would make a terrible impression if I shouted at her or started crying."

Harry wasn't sure how much he and Hermione had really helped - or how much either of them actually understood about the problem - but it seemed to have been enough. Draco drew Hannah off at dinner to talk to her, and when they arrived in the Great Hall Monday morning for breakfast neither of them looked upset, although he didn't have time to talk to Draco before leaving for History of Magic. 

Hermione, on the other hand, remained just as buried in books as before, although she reluctantly allowed herself to be roused for the purpose of meals and reminded to go to bed on time when Parvati spoke to her about it, "Officially, as your Prefect." She did let on that she was working on a project of some kind that she expected to be finished with, or at least less rushed on, soon, so Harry gave up and decided it was better than having her sniping constantly the way Ron was.

Soon there was a distraction that even Hermione emerged to pay attention to: the Daily Prophet on Tuesday morning announced that there would be a major change in the Ministry's schema for regulating and censoring publication at the beginning of the New Year. This was couched in terms of efficiency and fairness, but no one had any doubt it was related to Fudge's desire to keep power. When the library group was called to meet again, they agreed unanimously that they had better schedule the theft of the books for before the Christmas holidays.

"Otherwise who knows what we'll come back to?" Antigone Selwyn said darkly, to muttered agreement from all around the room.

They discussed it a while longer before settling on the Thursday night before the holidays began. This way if they were unexpectedly barred they would have a couple of days to reschedule before most of the group left for the holidays on Saturday, but equally there would not be much time for the Ministry to conduct a thorough investigation before the vast majority of the suspects vanished.

The rest of the meeting was devoted to reporting on progress made. Harry, Ron and Hermione had to show the Room of Requirement together. It was fortunate that the discovery was so spectacular, since it distracted somewhat from the fact that the three of them were barely speaking. Aside from this, Hermione got very involved in a debate between various organizational options that Harry could only sort of follow. He agreed, however, with the security-related conclusion that they would have to limit the number of people who accessed the room itself, retrieving requested books, and ideally students who were not involved should know of only a handful of people to request books from each.

That Friday, Harry was awakened by his pillow abruptly shooting out from under him and thudding against the headboard. He spluttered, bolting upright, and had his wand in hand before he registered Hermione peering him from a crack in the bedside curtains and identifiable even with his poor vision by her cloud of bushy hair.

"Don't _do_ that," he said, groping for his glasses. "What's wrong?"

"It's Draco," she said, gnawing on her bottom lip. He blinked at her, and she said, "Look, I was at breakfast early--"

Harry nodded. Hermione had continued to schedule her meals at awkward times to avoid Ron when possible, even if Parvati had extracted a promise to actually eat three every day.

"And I saw the morning Prophet, since I switched to the really early delivery time, and - I think we'd better be ready to meet him when he comes up," Hermione finished anxiously, and thrust the paper at him, folded back to the society news column.

Harry blinked, trying to focus his watery eyes. "Look, could you wait somewhere else?" he said. Hermione was watching him anxiously still, and he was very aware of how little clothing he slept in compared to his daily wear.

"Fine," Hermione said, exasperated, "I'll be in the common room when you're dressed." She thrust his curtains closed and clomped noisily out of the dorm.

Harry rolled his eyes and began to read. Immediately his stomach lurched at the headline: " _MALFOY'S MARRIAGE MISADVENTURE: NARCISSA BLACK'S SECRET MUGGLE HERITAGE._ " It was written, he saw with no real surprise, by Rita Skeeter.

"I just don't understand how she _heard_ us," Hermione said a few minutes later, when Harry had thrown clothing on and joined her in rushing down to the dungeons. "She's banned from Hogwarts, I asked after - last autumn. And it's not as though Narcissa would go telling tales - even if she got it from Marius or something, or she overheard her talking to Draco in October--"

"It had to be us, this is too big of a coincidence," Harry said. "But look, we know people have snuck into Hogwarts before, if she had an invisibility cloak or something--"  
"The dust in that room hadn't been disturbed in ages, you could tell," Hermione said. "She'd have had to come up with us, or after us, and we didn't hear anyone else on the steps--"

"There are silencing charms for that, though--"

"Do you think she might have overheard him talking to Hannah?" Hermione said. "Or if Hannah talked to someone - I just didn't think she was the type," she said, looking upset.

Draco met them not long after they reached the dungeons. It was obvious that he had already heard, probably from his nastier housemates. He was pale and worried looking, and only nodded a tight greeting before starting back up the stairs from the dungeons.

"All these people can't care that much that you're a halfblood," Harry said, once they had braved the whispering and glares on the way to the Gryffindor table. "I mean, _I'm_ a halfblood."

"I imagine it would be much less of a scandal if it was nearly anyone else," Draco said quietly. He did not seem very interested in the food this morning, but was halfheartedly buttering some toast. "Everyone knows it happens, since squibs show up more often in certain pureblood families, and a lot of them have magical children. You don't normally talk about it, it's _rude_ , but Lucius Malfoy, poster boy for respectable blood purism in Britain, being tricked into marrying a - a muggleborn..." He glanced at Hermione apologetically.

"Wouldn't she be a halfblood, too?" Hermione said. "I mean, when I read about the legal battles in the seventies people usually defined it based on grandparents, and Marius Black's parents were obviously magical."

"The technical sense isn't the one that matters in Society," Draco said, still staring at his plate. He seemed somewhat less ill now that he had something to explain. "My fathers' business associates would have called _anyone_ who knew how closely related they were to a muggle a mudblood, really, and she doesn’t have a magical parent at all. They still do, I suppose." He took a bite of toast absently and turned faintly green. "Pansy came to warn me in the dorms this morning. I'm surprised she was willing to."

"Hannah's coming over," Harry said, looking up and seeing her enter the Great Hall.

Hannah was twisting her hands anxiously and looked nearly as bad as Draco. "I am _so sorry_ ," she said, immediately upon reaching them. Her blond braids were in disarray, like she had been sleeping in them, and her robe was on backwards. "I didn't tell anyone, I swear - one of us must have missed someone eavesdropping--"

"It might have been when I told Harry and Hermione, but I don't see how we'd have missed anyone either place," Draco said tiredly. "I suppose the headmaster will be interested, since he's banned her from the school, even if he doesn't like _me_ much. 

"Don't - it's done, Hannah, don't worry," he added rapidly as tears filled her eyes, and got up to hug her. "It's nothing to the Blacks' political position, it was Sirius's parents who made the decisions, and we're liberals _now_. If anyone's going to be hurt it's my father, and that's a good thing, really."

The number of insults and hexes Draco spent the day dodging in the halls belied this statement somewhat. It did not seem to be any one clear group of students, either. Both purebloods who were angry they had been tricked about Draco and students with muggle heritage who Draco had bullied in the past were among the culprits. Harry and Hermione took to walking him to all of his classes, one on either side of him in the way Crabbe and Goyle had once guarded him, even if it made them late several times to their own. 

Fortunately, Daphne and Tracey got wind of this by the end of the day and offered to help next week instead. Daphne added that she was fairly certain she would have their year in Slytherin too intimidated to continue by breakfast tomorrow. Harry and Hermione exchanged rather nervous looks, having something of an idea of Daphne's sense of humor by now, but did not argue. 

"Everyone should have something better to think about by January, anyway," Tracey added, thumping Draco's shoulder comfortingly. "It's good timing for you, really, only a week to go before break."

"Except that he'll have to attend parties over the Christmas season," Daphne pointed out heartlessly. "--Cheer up, Draco, your mother will be there, and everyone is still terrified of _her_."

There was another consequence to the article that Harry hadn't anticipated. Saturday at breakfast, twenty-four hours after its publication, Draco received a letter at the Slytherin table from a once-familiar eagle owl with an elaborate seal. He didn't open it, but got up, tapping Daphne's shoulder. She and Tracey trailed him over to the Gryffindors.

"Do you mind coming?" Draco said, haltingly. "I'd rather be with - with friends. In private."

Ron scoffed loudly at the word 'friends' from several places over.

"What is it?" Hermione asked, but she gathered her bag obligingly.

"Come on, we'll explain somewhere else," Daphne said quickly. The four of them trailed out of the Great Hall to heightened whispering and went to a disused classroom nearby.

"I'll check for eavesdroppers this time?" Hermione said, raising her wand, but Draco shook his head.

"No point," he said, "There'll probably be something in the papers anyway. Father will have sent a notice." Then he broke the seal.

Inside the scroll was an elaborate document with several more seals on it, but Harry did not have to read to find out what it was. Lucius Malfoy's cold voice rose up from the scroll at once:

"I, Lucius Abraxas Malfoy, on this day the eighth of December, 1995, do disown and disinherit my sole issue, Draco Lucius Malfoy, heretofore deprived of his family name. I cast him forever from the family of Malfoy..."

Draco was shaking. Harry tried not to listen after this, although he wasn't sure he understood the legal formalities anyway. He put a hand on Draco's shoulder. Hermione moved over to hug him.

Draco's father's voice continued for thirty seconds, then ceased. The parchment flashed a brilliant white, then faded. It was unchanged except for a stamped-looking piece of text over the top, reading " _Heard and witnessed by recipient_ ," and the time and date. 

"Well, we knew it was coming," Draco said, voice breaking slightly. He swallowed and went on, "At least I'm not in limbo waiting for him to produce another - another child, now. I imagine Sirius will acknowledge me as a Black over the holidays, and there will be no more worry over - over Father trying to claim me, or him having the right to nullify my marriage..."

He swallowed hard, and then suddenly he was in silent tears.

Rex brought another letter from Sirius Monday morning, this time sent directly to Draco but addressed to Harry and Hermione as well. It confirmed this prediction, on the condition of Draco's agreement, and added that he had already spoken to Narcissa about it. Sirius had added that he was extremely pleased to formally welcome Draco to the House of Black, even if he wished it had been under better circumstances, and this did seem to make Draco feel better.

There was other political news as well. The House was coming to terms with Dumbledore, at least for the purpose of ousting Fudge. The fledgling political alliance had teamed up to find applicants for the numerous vacancies the Ministry had insisted Dumbledore fill in two months in time for next term, so that he had been able to - barely - fill this condition. 

(Sirius added that both Draco and Hermione would probably be pleased about some of the new professors, leading to a certain amount of speculation, as Hermione did not know all that many people in the magical world. "Is Grandmother applying?" Draco wondered. "I know she likes you."

"But wouldn't he have included Harry, then?" Hermione asked.)

Amelia had also embarked on a project that Sirius said that he couldn't help being pleased about, even if it was sure to have both good and bad effects. She had declared the intention to form a commission to review the convictions of prisoners currently held in Azkaban, on the basis of Sirius's wrongful conviction. The commission would be particularly interested in convictions without records of a full trial, and confessions obtained through torture.

They all knew perfectly well this would free some Death Eaters who really should not be walking around. However, there were people in the Order, and unrelated innocents, who would be freed as well, and it was high time magical Britain had some standards as to what was required to convict a prisoner in Sirius's opinion. In addition to this - although Sirius really thought it was enough - the move had been enough to cement the alliance against Fudge. If things proceeded as they were hoping, they might be able to oust him before Easter. This was interesting enough to almost completely distract Draco from his disownment, and occupied Hermione and Daphne very thoroughly as well. Harry found himself talking more to Dean and Seamus, who often sat near them at Gryffindor, and also to Tracey, who had been hanging around more often since Draco became a general school target, and Cho, who like him knew she would have to deal with politics as an adult but did not find them an ongoing source of current fascination.

Over the last week of term, Hermione's sudden absorption in work at all waking hours vanished as quickly as it had overtaken her. She arrived late to Charms Tuesday morning with only a perfunctory, yawned apology to Professor Flitwick. Furthermore, whatever she had been doing for the past two weeks apparently had _not_ been homework. Harry found this out when she actually got detention for not handing anything in in Transfiguration Wednesday, something that Harry could not remember ever happening to her before. Afterwards she brushed off his and Parvati's attempts to find out what was going on and did not even seem terribly upset.

"I had better things to do last weekend," she said calmly, although she waited until they were going down to lunch and McGonagall was not at risk of overhearing and doubling her detention. "I already know all of the theory for this term, anyway."

Harry opened his mouth and closed it, exchanging a baffled look with Parvati. This was certainly _true_ , but Hermione had never shown any sign she could be dissuaded from academic panic by a mere mastery of the material involved before. Her O.W.L. year was an odd time for this to change.

"You have time for the library Thursday, though, right?" he muttered when Parvati had gone on ahead, satisfied that she had done due diligence as Prefect.

"Of course!" Hermione said, shooting him a scandalized look.

At the end of the second library meeting, they had agreed that everyone going to take the books would be a disaster sure to get them caught. Instead they had chosen six students to manage the theft. Harry and Hermione, with their vast experience sneaking around at night and - discussed discreetly - stealing things, were both on that list. Harry was not sure if it was a good thing or not that the discussion had happened after the breakup and therefore Ron was not. On the one hand, an argument in the library would have done no good for the plan's success, but on the other the fact that everyone else would obviously prefer to have Harry and Hermione than just him probably wasn't helping Ron's temper.

Other students included were Adrian Pucey, Fern and Jonquil Zeller, and Susan Bones, who had cheerfully agreed that if they _did_ get caught, any MLE staff called to the school were bound to go easier on a group that included the Director's niece and heir. Adrian evidently had experience handling restricted and dangerous books, and the Zeller twins, in addition to admitting some experience with this themselves, were apparently able to speak to each other magically at a distance.

This last point had been brought up in a debate between whether to include the Zeller twins or the Weasley ones, or both. Fred and George had resolved it by offering to create a diversion as far from the library as possible, something they were undeniably experts in. About half of the group had nodded along to the declaration that both sets of twins were capable of silent communication. The other half - Harry and Hermione both, for once, included - had spluttered in demand for explanation. Finally Antigone Selwyn had cut them all off and told them irritably that it was a side effect of hereditary Legilimency and twin births coming together and it was common in the pureblood population, and anyone who was still staring should look up the phenomenon called child soul bonding in the library later and stop disrupting the meeting. 

(At this point, Harry remembered there _had_ been something on the general subject in the books Snape had set him, although he hadn't really understood the terminology involved. He certainly hadn't connected the phrase "synchronicity of expression enabled through the medium of constant Legilimentic contact" with Fred and George's unnerving tendency to finish each other's sentences.)

"But you two _aren't_ pureblood," said a girl Harry thought was in the Zeller twins' class.

"Don't be rude," Draco said with a pointed stare, which Harry thought was related to the recent scandal at first. 

One of the Zellers - Harry thought it was Fern but wasn't sure, since even if they were less identical than Fred and George he didn't know them nearly as well - sighed. "Yeah, we're not pureblood," she said. "But Mum's mum got dismissed for falling pregnant working as steward in the Black family home, and _Dad's_ mum is their honor court sheriff and never acknowledged a father for her last three children. So we're probably Black bastards on both sides, and we're all kind of hoping our parents are cousins and not half-siblings. They didn't talk about it until the two of us turned up like this."

This remark had done an excellent job of stopping the subject in its tracks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While the existence of some kind of bond between twins is fanon, I think something strange going on is pretty heavily implied by the way Fred and George act in canon, so I'm going with a version of it.
> 
> Liked this? [Reblog it](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/638665816795119616/the-glass-fortress-chapter-17-regulations) or come talk to me on tumblr!


	19. Term Ending

Thursday night, Fred and George cleared the common room around half past eleven by the simple method of arranging an accident with a Puking Pastille and an antidote dropped into the fire by mistake before it could be administered. Harry and Hermione had sat on the far side of the common room and were deliberately a bit slow getting their things together as the last stragglers decided their dorms were better places to study. Harry had brought the Invisibility Cloak with him, and he slipped it over the two of them while Fred led George out of the portrait hole, telling the Fat Lady they were going to the hospital wing, and helped stuff a second antidote down George’s throat as soon as they were all around the bend.

"Was it _really_ necessary to make that much work for the house elves?" Hermione asked as Fred and George vanished all traces of vomit.

"Oh, come on, Hermione, one will snap its fingers and vanish it all," George said, rolling his eyes. "So we're meeting the others at the Room, right?"

The Zeller twins, who were Ravenclaws, were waiting to meet them inside. Apparently, Ravenclaws rarely took notice of other students wandering out after hours and they weren’t the only ones to have left after curfew. They had longer to wait for Susan and Adrian, both coming from common rooms in the dungeon levels. 

"We don't need to worry too much about organizing the books," Adrian said when they were all present. The Zeller twins seemed happy to let him take over the lead as the other student in seventh year. "There are volunteers coming up to work on that over the holiday. A few of the more dangerous ones will need to be contained properly before we can leave, but mostly we need to move everything up to the room where it's safe and be sure the security measures are set."

"George and I," Fred continued, "Will be setting off a display of our new product, Wildfire Whizz-Bang fireworks, off the Astronomy Tower-"

"In full view of the windows from Filch's office-" George said.

"-In celebration of our imminent freedom over holidays-"

"-And to encourage any last minute Christmas shoppers to think of our mail order catalog."

Adrian rolled his eyes. "So, you have a plausible motivation to confess when you both get detention for every weekend in January."

"Aye-aye," George said. 

"He makes me miss Wood," Fred said, pretending to wipe a tear from his eyes.

"I _know_ Oliver Wood and there's no need to get insulting," Adrian Pucey said, then turned to the rest of the library theft party. "Everyone have your Extension Charmed bags? Okay, let's all cast the Silencing Charm on our shoes, and then Fern and Jonquil and I will Disillusion you three--"

"Sirius taught us that one, we can do it," Harry said, indicating himself and Hermione. This had been one of the emergency measures Sirius had taught them in light of his cousin's escape from Azkaban.

Adrian looked impressed. "Alright, go ahead and do it now so we can check everyone's work."

Fred and George left first, no special security measures cast, so that if one group was caught it would not draw attention to the other. The rest of them left a five minute count later, and hurried down to the library. That trip made for one of the most tedious clandestine excursions Harry had ever been on, although he thought that the first year trip with Norbert might have rivaled it if he hadn't been so terrified at the time. 

Once in the library, Adrian cast a spell that would give light only to their group on the central library torches. Then Jonquil Zeller went to hover in the hallway with Harry's Invisibility Cloak, ready to give her twin a silent warning if any of the staff came near. The rest of them began packing books. This matter was complicated by their uncertainty about what the Ministry was planning to confiscate. Undoubtedly when they found the worst volumes they had planned to object to gone, they would find something else to complain about, so the group had agreed anything Hogwarts could not replace should probably go in the Room. The vast majority of the Restricted section was coming, as were books on certain subjects that often came up in bills to expand censorship regulations, such as all but simpler Healing spells and legal books on the classification and history of Dark Arts. 

While Hermione, Harry and Susan packed the books they had identified as at risk from the main library first and then started in on unenchanted books in the Restricted section, Adrian and Fern Zeller worked on the more alarming tomes in the Restricted section, many of which required neutralization with magic or special containment to safely move. It was slow going work. When all of the safe books were packed, the two upperclassmen had only made it through one bookcase.

"You'd better let us help," Harry said, glancing at the books still to go. "Hermione and I were in the Black library over the summer, we'll be okay."

"The Bones one is probably as bad," Susan said, flipping her braid over her shoulder. "None of us are kids, you know."

Adrian looked less than pleased but agreed. With five people working on the cursed books it was true that everything went much faster. Harry was beginning to think that the plan would come off perfectly for once when a book Susan was disenchanting and Fern was restraining suddenly shot loose, scrabbled up Fern's arm, and bit her on the jaw.

Fern gasped in pain, but bit her tongue. Out in the hallway, linked to Fern but not braced for the impact, Jonquil screamed.

" _Relashio_ ," Harry hissed, jerking his wand up. The book twitched and released its grip, falling to the floor, and Harry stomped a foot on top of its cover before it could escape, pinning it shut. Hermione rounded her wand on it and finished the spell Susan had been trying to execute when the book distracted her, temporarily de-animating it until it could be bound firmly with a chain for transit.

Meanwhile Fern's face was swelling nastily. Susan had rapidly wadded up her robe sleeve and pressed it to the bite, subduing the bleeding, but the bite wasn't responding to the healing spells she was rapidly cycling through, face panicked.

"We'll have to take her to Madam Pomfrey, there's nothing for it," Adrian said, biting his lip.

"If she guesses what did that once the theft is discovered--" Hermione said.

"Book bites can be fatal, and that looks cursed," Adrian said flatly. "Anyway, Pomfrey never tells on students' illegal shite, this can't be the worst thing she's seen in the last week. It should still be fine as long as nobody else catches us."

"Guys," Jonquil hissed, close by but totally invisible, making Harry jump. "Someone's coming down the hall, I think they heard me scream. I locked the door but it won't hold for long--"

They tensed to flee, but it was obvious that Fern was in no shape to run with one eye swelling shut and blood trickling down her neck and shoulder through Susan's robe, and the rest of them could not simply abandon her. Harry glanced at the bags, then said "Jonquil, can you run with Fern hurt?"

"Not well," Jonquil said, audibly fighting pain.

"Okay - Hermione," Harry said, picking the student who would probably be in the most legal trouble with no family in magical Britain, "Take all of the bags we've already packed and the Invisibility Cloak - they'll know we had an accomplice but as long as you get them to the room without being caught--"

"Quick," Adrian said, catching on, "Jonquil, give her the Cloak--"

They heard the door unlock just as Hermione vanished behind the cloak, six weightless Extension Charmed bags slung over her arms. 

It swung open to reveal Snape.

They all froze. Harry opened his mouth to try to explain when Snape turned back and said clearly, "No, Madam Umbridge, the library is deserted - they must have fled after the scream." 

"They could be hiding!" the head inspector said furiously.

"Very well," Snape said, sounding bored. " _Hominum revelio_..." A swooping feeling passed through Harry. Snape shook his head and said, "I sense no results," then shut the door just as Umbridge came into view briefly behind the crack.

Harry had a moment of desperate, panicked confusion as to how she had not seen them before he remembered that only members of their own group could see Adrian's conjured light. They all stood, frozen, until they heard Umbridge and Snape's footsteps retreat. Hermione did not respond to Harry's soft call, so she had probably left through the opposite end of the library first. 

"I think they're gone," Susan said finally, sounding shaky. "Fern - dragonshite, this is really bleeding..."

"Let me see the wound," a new voice said from behind them. Harry jumped and turned, then spotted, with immense relief, Cassie's portrait.

"Come on," he said quickly to the others, "It's Cassiopeia Black - I bet she can tell us what to do--"

They carefully guided the half-blind Fern to the table in front of Cassiopeia's portrait, and Adrian lit his wand normally to allow Cassie to examine it. Susan cast an emergency field medicine spell she said her aunt had taught her that would suppress all bleeding for thirty seconds and allow analysis of a cursed wound, then quickly pulled her sodden, ruined sleeve away.

"Yes, very nasty," said Cassiopeia, who was standing in her portrait, tense and leaning over her desk. "Harry, try _Specialis Revelio_ and tell me what you get."

Susan had to recast the field medicine spell two more times, and each time blood began to flow again. Fern grew paler and dizzier each time. But finally Cassiopeia told Adrian to use three spells unfamiliar to Harry on the book bite, and together they closed the wound on Fern's face and reduced the swelling and the green color. She was still pale and dizzy, but it was no longer obvious was the problem was, and Jonquil said she could walk her to Pomfrey herself. 

"I'll say she's having a bad period," Jonquil said calmly, ignoring Harry and Adrian's awkward faces. "She'll know we're lying but she'll give us Blood Replenishing Potion anyway once she tests Fern, and that can go in the official records."

Adrian proved to be carrying two extra bags in case of problems, so he, Susan and Harry cleaned up the blood in the library and then finished the last three shelves of cursed books. Harry did not relax even an inch until they had managed the silent trip up to the Room of Requirement and found Hermione there, already unpacking the bags they'd started out with. 

"You know someone must have tipped off Umbridge," Hermione said to them in greeting, coming over to hug Harry. "The inspectors left weeks ago, they haven't been at meals in ages and I heard McGonagall telling Flitwick."

"We'll have to ask Dumbledore if the secrecy charm was breached tomorrow," Adrian said unhappily. 

Harry wasn't really satisfied the ordeal was over until breakfast Friday morning, when he was able to stop by Cho and see that the Zeller twins were present at the Ravenclaw table, Fern looking perfectly healthy. Harry's Fridays were already extremely busy this term, and he also had to pack to go home for Christmas for the first time in his time at Hogwarts, so he wasn't able to go to see Dumbledore about the secrecy charm himself. Draco came over at dinner table to sit with them and cast _Muffliato_ , which they had all been remembering to use more often lately. Then he told them what he had heard from Adrian Pucey at lunch.

Apparently the N.E.W.T. students involved in the theft had gone to see Dumbledore this morning in their free first period. He had already been warned by Cassiopeia's portrait that someone had tipped off the Ministry to an alleged theft last night, and the Minister himself was putting up a fuss over the theft. Dumbledore’s investigations had determined the culprit almost immediately between the lack of any breech of the secrecy charm, and the few details the Ministry had been given.

"It was one of the portraits," Draco concluded. "We all met in that nice, crowded office. Apparently there's some kind of binding on them, they have to be loyal to the present Headmaster, so they couldn't report that _Dumbledore_ was conspiring to have the books stolen. Dumbledore must have expected that to be enough. But there's nothing stopping them from reporting someone else conspiring to commit crimes in the office, so one of the ones with a portrait elsewhere went and told someone at the Ministry that they'd overheard students conspiring to remove the contested books from the library..."

"Is Dumbledore going to be in trouble?" Hermione asked anxiously.

Draco shook his head. "Names weren't given, apparently - most of the Headmasters’ portraits wouldn’t blame students for obeying the current office holder - and like I said, they can't directly betray the Headmaster, so they only got a tip off about the theft itself. We knew they would find that out anyway, so no damage was really done, given that you got away alright. Dumbledore's trying to figure out which portrait it was now, and obviously we can't discuss anything secure in the Headmaster's office at least until he does."

On that unsettling note, Harry left for Gryffindor to finish packing and perhaps nap before his last Astronomy class of the term.

Saturday morning, Hermione was tense at breakfast, looking up at the ceiling of the Great Hall repeatedly, and nearly unresponsive to attempts at conversation. She was coming home with Harry for the holidays, and it had been apparent for most of the week that she and Ron would not be making up before break, so Harry resigned himself to finding out what had been going on with her later, when they at least had some privacy. He was about to go over to eat with Cho, who he wouldn't see much of for several weeks, when a large screech owl with an unfamiliar but official looking seal on the letter it bore alighted by Hermione and stuck its beak in her plate.

Hermione took no notice of this, but removed the scroll with shaking hands and slit it open as Harry watched, baffled. She unrolled it and skimmed the text; her anxious face went slack at once, and she erupted onto her feet in a most un-Hermione-ish display, punching one fist into the air. "YES!"

The owl took off with a startled hoot. Harry jumped, and Neville moved his goblet away nervously. "Um, Hermione?" Harry said. "Who's it from?"

" _Arithmancy_ ," Hermione said happily, retaking her seat with a sort of dazed grin. "The journal, I mean. We got published!"

"You're _published_?" Parvati said.

"Who's we?" Harry asked.

"So you got the revisions in on time?" Dean asked, forking kippers onto his plate and instantly drawing the attention of everyone else.

"Why do _you_ know about it?" Ron asked from down the table nastily.

"Because I've been working with his stepmother," Hermione said, addressing Harry loudly as though it had been him asking and not Ron. "You remember the computer books, and the statistics ones? I know you stopped looking after I told you what the first one was, so probably not. There have been some attempts at statistical modeling with Arithmancy - it has variables and methods to represent the sort of things you can't really do with muggle maths - but it's all been limited to what people can do with paper and maybe an abacus. 

"You can do _so much_ more with computer models, so much faster - anyway we haven't had a chance to do anything _really_ revolutionary yet but we wrote up our first proof of concept, using existing muggle programs and adapting them to a few current Arithmancy problems and submitted it last month. They wanted the first round of revisions by last week in order to get it in the next issue for January - I wasn't sure we'd make it in time, or that they wouldn't want another round, that's why I was so busy last week. Their offices close the same week Hogwarts does, so today was the last day I could have gotten this, if they reviewed our revisions yesterday."

"You couldn't have _said_ that when I was worrying you’d had a breakdown because of your break up?" Parvati asked, sounding exasperated.

"So is this why you don't care about homework now?" Harry said, grinning.

"Well, it's so much more exciting," Hermione said, ignoring Parvati now as well. "I mean, N.E.W.T. students get co-authorships occasionally but the last time a pre-O.W.L. student was published in _Arithmancy_ was 1895!"

"How on _earth_ are you in the same Arithmancy class as us?" asked Tracey Davis, who had just come into earshot. "Hi, Harry, Hermione, I came to say goodbye before the holidays."

"I haven't really been doing the same assignments as anyone else since the first term of third year," Hermione admitted. "But Professor Vector said there was no point in having me sit with the N.E.W.T. students just to do separate assignments there instead. And I like helping."

They went up to Gryffindor Tower to finish packing in a rush after breakfast, as those students who were going home for the holiday had to meet at the Entrance Hall at nine. They did not strictly have to take everything with them, since they would be returning in three weeks, but there was plenty of holiday homework they needed materials for, and everyone had Christmas shopping they needed to be sure came home alongside their personal belongings. Harry tried to catch Ron in the commotion to talk, but Ron muttered something about forgetting his soap and dashed back out of the dorm, and Harry gave up. 

Harry spent the first hour or two of the train ride home sitting with Cho in a compartment mostly filled with Ravenclaw girls, talking about holiday plans and dangling ribbons for Viviane to chase around the compartment before she fell asleep, purring, in Cho's lap. Asteria was sitting with Carya, who was trying to convince her little sister to come home with her again, but Asteria steadfastly redirected the conversation to Irene every time, and Carya could not really elaborate on her arguments with so many witnesses. Eventually Harry kissed Cho goodbye after establishing that they would try to meet up at the Bones Christmas party, which both of their families would certainly attend. He asked Asteria if she wanted to come with him while he went looking for Daphne along with Hermione and Draco. Asteria agreed, and Harry and Carya exchanged pointed looks over her head.

But while Asteria was happy enough to sit in their compartment and lure Crookshanks into chasing the ends of her hair, she was just as resistant to their arguments as Carya's. "I'm not backing down," she said firmly, scratching Crookshanks's ears when he flopped limply into her lap at last. "It'll just make it obvious I was faking. Mum won't hurt me."

"Carya's wrong, you _definitely_ should have been a Gryffindor," Daphne muttered. "You should ask to be sorted again if you make it to next term."

"Maybe I will," Asteria said stubbornly.

Harry, Hermione and Draco deliberately left the train a minute or so after Asteria and Daphne to avoid coming out too close together. Aside from that, all they could do was wish Asteria well.

Sirius had come with Remus, Narcissa and Tonks to meet them. Harry had seen Sirius only a few weeks ago after the last disastrous Hogsmeade weekend, but he had been distracted at the time, and Sirius had been pale with worry. Now, it really sank in that Sirius was recovered, both from Crouch's curse, and from his year as a fugitive and the years before that in Azkaban. He no longer needed the cane he had used over the summer, and he had gained back weight Harry had only been half-aware was missing, and something subtle about the way he stood, which gave the sense of being in charge of any given room. 

Looking over the group clustered together on the platform, Harry couldn't help thinking they made an odd assortment. Sirius was wearing a dark burgundy open robe over black slacks and a dark dress shirt, and his hair was pulled loosely back, falling down to his elbows. With the two rings on his left hand - the Black signet, and an onyx ring with the Black crest on it again in silver - he might have been some kind of barbarian prince in a movie, except for the style of the shirt and trousers, which was far too modern. Narcissa, wearing a flowing deep purple gown with a doubled, knotted sash and wide sleeves, would have fit in that movie, as did Draco, whose idea of changing out of uniform was to put on a different set of robes, this one made of gray wool.

But Tonks was wearing biker boots and a jacket with a number of brightly colored patches sewn on it, and had arranged her hair in its customary spiky pink, and Remus had a rather battered tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows. Harry and Hermione, too, had changed into muggle clothing, and their jumpers and jeans would have fit in much better with this latter group.

"Alright, Harry?" Sirius's smile was slightly anxious.

"Yeah, sorry, just thinking," Harry said, and went over to hug him. 

They arranged things so that there was one adult to each teenager to Apparate, and one left behind to guard while the others were occupied. The plan was for Narcissa and Draco to go to Grimmauld Place directly, and for Tonks to verify she had made it with Sirius and then go home to her own flat while Sirius and Remus took Harry and Hermione back to their house; then they would all have dinner together at Grimmauld Place ("Cissy's uncovered one of the less disturbing dining rooms from the depths of the house," Sirius commented) along with the rest of the family, and talk about plans for the holiday.

There were no security mishaps exiting the platform, to Harry's relief. He was worried enough about Christmas, which he had the distinct impression was not going to be the same kind of private, low key affair it had been last year. He and Hermione got unpacked pieces at a time, and wandered down to the kitchen for a snack, having eaten so much from the trolley that neither of them really wanted lunch. 

"I keep expecting my parents to leap out and ask me about what I've been eating," Hermione said with a nervous giggle. "It's strange to think--" Then she abruptly stopped and asked Remus about how his book about wyverns was going.

Harry felt somewhat odd about returning to the house after the last term. Last year, of course, Sirius had been at school with them, so it had sat empty for the whole time they were away. But this year Sirius and Remus had been living there without them for four months, and he could tell. The furniture had been subtly rearranged in the living room downstairs, there were a few new dishes in the kitchen and photographs on the walls he didn't recognize. None of it was exactly bad, only unfamiliar. He had not cared enough to notice this sort of thing about Privet Drive, and generally hadn't been allowed time to examine the rest of the house anyway.

They all took the Floo into the kitchen at Grimmauld Place around five o'clock. The great stone room was unchanged, but when they climbed the stairs up to the entry way, Harry stopped short and blinked, wondering if they had somehow all come out at the wrong grate. The entry he remembered was a long, dark corridor leading back into the house, and a staircase going up parallel to it, lined with the heads of the house elves. There was still a corridor reaching back into the house, and a staircase, and he thought some of the portraits watching were familiar, but the room was otherwise changed utterly. The dining room that had previously taken up the front of the house seemed to have been eliminated, broadening the entry into a hall and creating room for staircases on both ends. The hall back was about double in width itself and was now lit brightly. The house elf heads were no longer in evidence.

"We moved the heads to the crypt, since throwing them out would be indecent," Narcissa said, coming down the right staircase. She obviously knew what Harry had been looking for. "The Head of the family has fairly good control over the house with the enchantments on it and the property itself, and the rooms can be closed off and hidden or opened. It turns out that the connecting corridors can _also_ be rearranged if you remove the contents from them at the time, and uncurse everything that might explode if interfered with. That last part doesn’t seem to have happened since Sirius’s great-grandfather inherited."

"We had to make the house safe for muggle guests anyway, and the place is a lot more tolerable with fewer memories brought up," Sirius added from behind Harry on the stairs. "Go on, let Hermione get a look at it."

"Sorry," Harry said, rapidly moving forward to let Hermione off the stairs.

"We split up the first floor as well," Narcissa continued as she came down. "The drawing room we used before is up the left side, but there are a few more open rooms that are more comfortable. You shouldn't be able to get _too_ lost, just go down stairs until you recognize something if you are. For now come on, the new dining room is up a level on this side."

On that comforting note, the four of them proceeded upstairs past Narcissa.

The dining room Sirius led them to was entirely unfamiliar. Unlike the previous ground floor dining room, it was a round room with an arched ceiling. A mural extended down from a painted night sky through a shadowy forest to the place at hip height where wood paneling began on the walls. The eyes peering out from the branches were somewhat unnerving, and Harry thought some of the trees had faces, but all in all it was considerably less off putting than much of the Grimmauld Place decor.

Most of the floor was taken up by an immense round table with seats for at least twenty people. Harry could see at once that they would be needed. Everyone in the extended Black family seemed to be present, including the Black aunts and Andromeda's family, and Tonks's girlfriend Evelyn. In addition, there were several unfamiliar people. An elderly man and woman were clustered together with a woman around Andromeda's age and a boy who looked a little bit younger than Harry, Draco and Hermione.

Hermione made an indeterminate noise in Harry's ear and said, "I think that's Graeme Walker? He's a third year Gryffindor."

"Yes, he's Marius's grandson," Sirius said, overhearing. "Let me introduce you - Marius," he called to the older man, starting over, "This is my godson, Harry Potter, and his friend Hermione Granger. Harry, Hermione, this is my great uncle Marius Black, his wife Annabelle, their daughter Lydia, and her son, Graeme."

"It's nice to meet you," Harry said, awkwardly extending his hand to shake. Marius looked a little like Sirius, although his still-brown hair was cut short the way muggle men usually wore it. Annabelle's had gone white, but it was immediately obvious from her face that this was Narcissa's mother. Lydia, then, would be Narcissa's biological sister, but she didn't look much more like Narcissa and Draco than Andromeda or Bellatrix, who Harry thought would be Narcissa and Lydia's cousins - or nieces? - did. Lydia's hair was a curly, mid brown, although her eyes were blue like Narcissa's, and her features were softer. She might have been Andromeda's sister instead.

"A pleasure to meet you both as well," Marius said, looking over the two of them thoughtfully. "I've heard good things about you both from Sirius."

"It's strange to be here," Annabelle remarked, more to Sirius than to them. "Marius spoke of the house occasionally, but I never expected to see it myself."

"Did you grow up here?" Hermione asked.

"Until I was nine and it became apparent there was no further chance I would have magic," Marius said. "My parents sent me away, then." He glanced around the room. "I admit I'm grateful that Sirius has rearranged the inside. We've been meeting here for business, but he finalized the changes in time for your return from school."

"I hope the memories weren't too bad," Sirius said.

"It's as much the good as the bad," Marius said, then transferring his gaze to Harry and Hermione, added, "I had four siblings and five cousins, almost all now dead. My cousin Callidora Longbottom nee Black is still alive, I believe. I did not expect to be the last survivor. Squibs sometimes live as long as wizards, but..."

"Blacks don't tend to have long lifespans," Narcissa said, coming over. She gave a quick, fleeting smile to Marius and Annabelle - her parents, Harry thought, feeling strange about the idea and wondering how much stranger it must be for her and Draco. "Although hopefully under Sirius the family will be saner."

"So I hope," Lydia said, speaking for the first time and squeezing Graeme's shoulder. 

Graeme had been investigating the mural, making faces at one of the pairs of glowing eyes that blinked from the foliage and seeing if it followed him moving, but at this he turned. "Hi," he said, grinning at Harry and Hermione. "I'm in your house but I've never actually talked to you at school, I'm Graeme."

"Nice to meet you," Harry said, feeling relieved that if Graeme was in third year now, he wouldn't have been around for the year when most of Gryffindor had suspected Harry of being the Heir of Slytherin. "Did you grow up knowing you were related to the Blacks?"

"Kind of?" Graeme said, trailing away from his mother towards the table; Harry and Hermione followed him as the adults drifted away in a separate knot. "I knew Mum and Granddad worked for a magical family, and I know Granddad's last name, of course, but I didn't really connect that to _the Blacks_ until last year when Sirius came to teach at Hogwarts. Although I probably should have guessed when Mum changed my legal name to my dad’s when I started school - he left when I was little, I don’t remember him. Granddad wrote me to ask me to tell him about what Sirius was like and that was when I _realized_. Mum thinks I might have gotten it - magic - from my father, although I guess sometimes muggleborns show up with just squib relatives."

"Was your father a wizard?" Harry asked, pulling a chair out.

"She doesn't know, they weren’t together very long. Mary - she's talking to Aunt Andromeda over there - is my half-sister, really, and so's Elaine, _she_ didn't come. Neither of them have magic." The woman Graeme had indicated was about the same age as Tonks, but much more conservatively dressed.

"You're a third year, right?" Hermione said. "What electives are you taking this year?"

"Care of Magical Creatures and Arithmancy," Graeme said. "Hagrid's _brilliant_ , isn't he?"

Harry agreed, and tried very hard not to look surprised to hear someone who only knew him as a teacher thought so. A few minutes later Graeme began regaling them with how jealous he was of Dennis Creevey for falling out of the boat and being rescued by the giant squid, explaining matters somewhat. Lydia turned and called Graeme over to ask something not much time later, leaving Harry feeling as though a sudden crowd had departed, rather than one thirteen or fourteen year-old boy. 

"He's a lot, isn't he," Harry muttered.

"Nearly unbearable," said Draco, sitting down in the chair Graeme had just vacated, "And mind I've only known him for three hours. How are you this evening, Harry, Hermione?"

"We’re fine, and you?" Hermione said. "Do you know if there's family news they've rounded us up for, or is this only because we're home?"

"Most families _do_ have some kind of welcome dinner when children come back from Hogwarts together," Draco said, "But I wouldn't be surprised if it was both. That, and introducing us to the new cousins," he said, indicating Marius with a tilt of his head. "The Shacklebolts don't presently have anyone in school, that's probably why Evelyn's here with Tonks."

"Close, we've got one," Evelyn said from nearby, "But Rosannah's with her mother's family instead, her parents both died. She's in Graeme's year."

"How was school?" Tonks asked, leaning forward. "Anyone give Madam Umbridge a heart attack? I heard Fudge inflicted her on you."

Harry and Hermione regaled Tonks and Evelyn - and Draco - with the story of Umbridge's fight with Moody over the listening charms after the Gryffindors’ class, to hilarity from Tonks, especially, who apparently had been one of Moody's last personal student before he retired. "Oh Merlin, he must have _loved_ that," she said, gasping. "I'm surprised no one died."

"Alright, if everyone wants to take a seat," Sirius called, voice cutting over the conversations around the room. "The food's about to be served." 

There was a sudden clatter as seventeen people clustered in knots around the room went to take chairs. Harry ended up with Draco on one side and Tonks on the other; Hermione sat on Draco's other side.

Sirius looked across the table when everyone was sitting and smiled, ducking his head slightly, as though he still wasn't entirely sure what to do. When he spoke, however, he sounded confident. "Thank you, everyone, for coming tonight, and welcome home, Harry, Draco, Hermione, Graeme," he said, nodding in the direction of where the students had clustered. "I hope everyone's autumn term went well, and spring term as well. 

"Those of you who've been working with me already know this," he added, casting a smile around the table at most of the adults, "But the 1995 census of the Black properties is now complete, making it the first one accomplished in thirty years after the disruption of the last war. We can now proceed with only the ordinary soul crushing reams of paperwork. Thank you, especially Andromeda, Narcissa, Druella, Lydia, Ted, and Remus, for your assistance there.

"In other news, tonight we welcome two children of the family officially into the House. Draco, Graeme, who wants to go first?"

Draco politely deferred to Graeme, who got up with wide-eyed curiosity and darted over to Sirius, nearly tripping over Tonks's chair leg in the process to general laughter. Graeme seemed to know what he was doing, since he didn't stop for instructions, but only halted in front of Sirius.

Sirius stood up and cupped Graeme's face. "A child of our daughters is a child of the House. Graeme Walker, I welcome you as a Black," he said, and kissed Graeme's forehead. This formula apparently didn't require a response, because Graeme only thanked him and went back to his seat.

Draco was next, and unsurprisingly rather more dignified about it. He bowed after approaching Sirius, and Sirius rested his hands on Draco's shoulders instead of cupping his face. He also said only 'Draco,' not 'Draco Malfoy,' which Harry supposed was probably because Draco had been disowned.

"I'll get the paperwork sent to the Ministry in the morning," Sirius said when both Draco and Graeme had sat down. "When you go back to school you'll both be legally Blacks. I'm sure Professor McGonagall will be grateful for the extra staff with two of you," he added, to several snickers. "I think that's everything. Kitchens, please serve," he said without raising his voice, and serving platters appeared on the table at once, with almost as large an assortment of food as was available during Hogwarts feasts. 

Conversation started back up rapidly. Harry regretted sitting so far from Sirius, as it was nearly impossible to talk to him with the entire table between them. But he supposed he would have the rest of break to do that anyway. Beside Harry, Draco and Hermione got into a conversation about the paper she and Dean's stepmother had just written and the problems they had modeled with a computer program Dean's stepmother had written. 

Harry turned to Evelyn and Tonks instead, and listened to Tonks telling stories from work. Eventually they went down another path. "So, Draco's heir now, right?" Evelyn said to Tonks, glancing across the table.

"Yeah, the Black succession's bleeding weird even by pureblood standards," Tonks said. "So, theoretically the Head can designate as heir whoever he pleases, but then the rest of the family and the heads of all freeborn tenant households have a right to challenge their suitability in court and there have been a few nasty civil wars in family history over unexpected choices, so usually they go by the default rules now. Normally that’s the oldest cousin raised in the family residence in the generation, regardless of their exact place in the line, but none of us were raised here, so it skips that and goes to the oldest in the generation regardless of upbringing. It can’t go parallel or backwards unless the entire youngest generation is wiped out or disowned. Since Narcissa’s on the tree as Cygnus and Druella’s, her son counts as youngest, but if I agree to take the Black name I'll be heir unless Sirius designates someone else, that's part of why I haven't - I'm the oldest, so..."

"And Graeme's up a generation, so even if he was older than Draco he would be after him," Evelyn said, casting a thoughtful look down the table. 

"You don't want to inherit?" Harry asked. He remembered he had heard Tonks turning Sirius down discreetly last Easter.

Tonks snorted. "I've sort of already got a job, mostly," she said, running a hand over her spiky pink hair. "And I _don't_ look right for it, or know how to act for it. Sirius is probably further to the left than me, politically. I get shit from my girlfriend here about being a copper, let alone my friends, while Sirius has spent the last six months reading about the history of land reform programs to decide what the best way of legislating the nobility out of existence is before he starts trying to drum up support. Apparently he’s the reason there’s a Hogwarts school rule designating the _Communist Manifesto_ as contraband, too. But he was actually raised as a pureblood heir and he knows how to talk and dress the part."

Harry understood about half of this explanation, but he didn't have time to ask before Tonks went on, "Plus, I mean, I wouldn't _have_ to have kids as long as Draco and Graeme do, especially with the way Black succession works, so being an Auror and not being able to get married legally and have legitimate children wouldn't be a huge problem, but it would matter, some. The Black Head's spouse has a lot of duties of her own, and people already think Sirius is irresponsible for not getting married. Which is dumb, but it's one more thing he can weather a lot better than me politically, since he's trained on how to react to it, and he’s, you know, a man."

"To be fair, I'd probably be better equipped to be Lady Black than Remus is," Evelyn said, "But Tonks would hate being _Lord_ Black." She ruffled her girlfriend's hair. Tonks made a face.

"Would you two be able to get married, if it wasn't for Tonks being an Auror?" Harry asked, feeling out of depth again.

"Not by the Ministry, but there are legal contracts for adoptions into another House that are almost as good for most practical stuff recognized by it, and it's House law that's really important for the Head's wife," Tonks said. "So if I was heir I could ask Sirius to write something up giving Evelyn the permissions in the family magic that the heir's wife is supposed to have, and he could just do it without asking anyone else. And like, if two Black vassals of the same sex want to get married, Sirius can't make the churches consecrate it - although he might be able to, the Blacks are one of the main patrons of the Wizarding Church of Britain - but he can make a contract generally available and order his courts to enforce it, so yeah, the Black dependents now have civil same sex marriage."

"Would it be a problem for Draco inheriting, that he's seeing Hannah Abbott?" Harry asked.

Tonks and Evelyn exchanged looks. "I mean, if they actually get married it could be," Tonks said. "You _can_ write a marriage contract so the kids are split between the parents' Houses, but that's putting a lot on her since the Abbotts _do_ have gender neutral primogeniture and she's an only child. She'd have to have enough children to secure her succession _and_ the Blacks' need for another generation to exist at all, unless her closest cousins are politically acceptable, which I don't think they are."

"And she probably also needs a spouse who will join her House formally and carry out official duties, although I guess the Abbotts are sort of used to going on without that," Evelyn added, "Since Angharad was a widow for most of her time as head."

"But all of that's kind of far in the future, especially since Sirius made it House law that minors can't be contracted for binding engagements," Tonks said. "So Draco can't even agree to a proposal formally for almost a year and a half. Unless he straight up elopes, and I don’t think they’re that interested in each other, are they? Ugh, I sound like I swallowed a legal textbook. Mum's been cramming stuff down my throat for months every time I have a day off."

Harry made a vague noise of agreement into his potatoes and was grateful when Tonks changed the subject to Quidditch. Dinner broke up about a half hour after pudding, Sirius thanking everyone for coming again first. People drifted out of the dining room, some for the sitting room across the hall, others declaring their intention to return home. 

Marius Black came over to Harry, leading Hermione. "Excuse me," he said quietly, "Could I talk to the two of you for a moment? Somewhere more private?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hermione in this universe has more attention to spare for purely academic concerns, more connections socially, and more of an idea that scholarship is important to political success in this universe (which I think is implied by the careers of eg. Dumbledore or Tom Riddle in canon, and even Slughorn's preferences). 
> 
> I don't think Aurors translate well into muggle police socially/politically for a few reasons, but the dissonance between how Tonks presents herself and her job can still get her some comments in-universe.
> 
> Liked this? [Reblog it](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/639352818250268672/the-glass-fortress-chpt-18-term-ending) or come talk to me on tumblr!


	20. Sworn Service

Harry and Hermione exchanged baffled looks, but got up to follow Marius. He left the dining room and climbed up another flight of stairs, huffing slightly, before turning down the hall and going through a door into a small office.

"This is Narcissa's, but she won't mind me borrowing it for a minute," Marius said. "--Would one of you do me the favor of lighting the lamp?"

Hermione slipped her wand out with a soft "Oh - sorry!" and lit the oil lamp on the desk quickly.

"Thank you," Marius said, sitting down in the chair behind the desk. He steepled his fingers together and for moment only looked at them wearily. "Well."

"What do you want to talk to us about?" Hermione asked, perching on one of the chairs in the office. Harry followed her lead, sitting down at her left.

"I want to be clear," Marius said, speaking slowly, "That I ask this out of concern, not... to offer insult. Perhaps it will help if I start with my own story, if it won't bore you." His voice was low and clear, and very even. They shook their heads, and he went on, "I mentioned before that I was born with no magic, and my parents sent me out of the house when I was nine years old. That was in the twenties, when magical society was... very different. In particular it was before the 1945 reform bill was passed, and... clarified what was an offense against society and eligible to be tried in the Wizengamot's subcourts, regardless of House law."

Hermione, indeed, was biting her lip and rocking very slightly forward in her chair. "You're talking about the - the enslavement provision, aren't you?"

"Indeed. The bill made formal enslavement of humans universally illegal. It also clarified that laws against murder and magical enslavement applied to muggles." Marius sighed. "But that was in 1945. The Blacks, at that time, had... a habit of relegating non-magical children to the status of slaves, dependents on the family who would never... grow up, I believe was the thinking. I was sent to live with a descendant of the last squibs born to the family, an elderly solicitor, who saw that I was educated in the muggle world in order to work for the family and thereby justify the expense of feeding me." 

He smiled bitterly, and went on, "When war broke out, I saw the draft laws as an opportunity, unlike most men of my age range. I enlisted, rather than using my status as a resident - not citizen - of magical Britain to dodge, and thinking I'd find a girl to marry in France if I survived and stay there after the war, and maybe it would prevent Arcturus from tracking me down as a runaway."

"And instead the bill was passed?" Harry asked, feeling ill.

"Instead, Orion - Sirius's father - dueled his father over the headship at the age of fifteen and won. Sirius did not know his father well. I'm not sure how much he's said to you about him. But Orion was brilliant, every bit as much a genius as Bellatrix. If it weren't for that appalling marriage to his cousin--" Marius exhaled heavily. "They're dead and gone now. What I meant to say was that Orion had had the actual purpose of slavery - that is, shameless and criminal abuse - rubbed in as a child. His father, whose flaws Sirius said he mentioned to you once, Harry, had taken advantage of it to terrorize him. He wrote instructions freeing all of the family's human and near-human slaves when he inherited, and his was one of the deciding votes in the 1945 bill."

There was a pause. Harry felt odd, hearing this explanation, as though something was wrong, and was trying to put it together when Hermione said, "But what about Kreacher? And - you had other elves before, didn't you?"

"Orion did not see house elves as people in the way that he saw humans," Marius said carefully. "I am not trying to justify it, Hermione, only explain what I know of his decisions. He had never seen house elves abused for his father's gratification in the same way, which I suspect played a role in why. He _did_ free a number of veela and part-veela slaves belonging to the House of Black, and several part-trolls, and that alone is very... unusual in a man of his background."

"I'm sorry," Harry said, regretting it as he spoke, "Part _trolls?_ " He was thinking of the trolls he had had unfortunate contact with in his first year at Hogwarts.

Marius looked at him for a moment. Then he said, evenly, "While trolls are not human enough to be interested in sex with human women, and no normal human would voluntarily have intercourse with one, breeding trolls to enslaved women in order to produce malleable security guards with more than human strength is - was - a known practice carried out by several magical families. They are referred to as 'security trolls.' Obviously, it could only be done with an enslaved human, and therefore new crosses of the type are illegal; but since the 1945 manumission bill applied exclusively to pure humans, any such existing mixed people and their children can still be traded. And given some fake paperwork, new crosses can be traded as well."

Harry regretted asking.

"Then - didn't it _work?_ " Hermione said, sounding sickened. "The bill?"

"It did a lot of work," Marius said, settling slowly back in his chair. "Slaves who were made aware of the bill knew they could leave, as long as they could physically manage it, without being arrested and forced back. Efforts were made by MLE to force landowners who ignored the bill to proclaim it and to enable their former slaves to leave. It also means that violators of the law will be prosecuted if they're caught, instead of their victims prosecuted for escaping. 

"Additionally, non human peoples have never been all that populous in Britain, and that's all the more true in the last fifty years since large portions of Europe banned the slave trade altogether, or conversely allow trade _only_ in muggles - the vast majority of the European slave market consisted of muggles. As a result of banning that sector, the public markets in Britain have been closed, although the economy is still settling the aftershocks, and that's not unrelated to the last war. 

"But yes, most trade in slaves is conducted in gentleman's meetings behind closed doors, and the vast majority of slaves are kept entirely in the household and secluded like the house elves you're familiar with, so there is still quite a bit of illegal trade in humans, muggle or magical." He hesitated. "But I was getting to why I asked you to step out. As I said, I don't mean to cause offense. But... both of you have left muggle families rather suddenly and completely to live with Sirius, and I would be remiss not to check with the two of you that it is of your own free will."

"Sirius is my godfather," Harry said, slightly indignantly. Marius only looked evenly back, and Harry swallowed in the face of it. "I mean, yes, I wanted to come live with him. He asked if I did when we met, he didn't just assume. The Dursleys - my aunt and uncle - hated me, my aunt never got along with Mum, they didn't want me."

"I apologize for the intrusion," Marius said, inclining his head to Harry, and then looked at Hermione.

Hermione was biting her lip, staring hard at her lap. Marius hesitated and added, "You don't need to tell me why. Sirius mentioned that you were not... forthcoming in detail when you arrived at his house last summer. I only want to be sure that what he told me is true."

"It is," Hermione said at last, softly. "I'm here - freely. My cousin knows where I am... I mean, my parents do too, or they can probably guess, they just--" She stopped talking here and shook her head violently.

"Alright. Again, I apologize for upsetting you," Marius said. He rose, then, and Harry half-expected him to leave, but instead he turned to open a high cupboard and withdrew a bottle of amber liquid. "Would you like some? You're old enough, I think, and this has been a... trying conversation."

To his surprise, Hermione muttered, "Maybe? Just a bit, though."

"Of course." Marius took out several crystal tumblers and poured out drinks for Hermione and himself and then, when Harry nodded curiously, for him as well; Marius's own held two or three times as much. Harry tried a sip and grimaced at the flavor, but there was an interesting aftertaste, and he tried again curiously.

Marius glanced at the clock when they had both finished. "I suspect Sirius is wondering where the two of you have wandered off to, it's getting rather late. We'd better go back down."

In the morning they had more news: the honor duel between Radulph Abbott and Hannah's champion in the House of Black had been scheduled for December the eighteenth, the very next day.

"Who's actually fighting, then?" Harry asked, when he came down to a conversation about it.

"Narcissa," Sirius said, handing off the paper to Remus at the table. "Which I'm sure will give him a dose of overconfidence for about two seconds before she flattens him, but she's the most experienced duelist in the family at the moment, barring Bella. Aunt Dru's a better teacher but doesn't have much combat practice."

"Rather terrifying woman," Remus agreed, bending to frown at an article in the _Prophet_. "Sirius, look at this one."

"Will we be, er, watching?" Harry asked, getting eggs out of the fridge. 

"If you want to come, I think Hannah might appreciate the support from her classmates," Sirius said. "She has to be there, since technically as her champion Narcissa's only her second. I'm coming as witness and Narcissa's Head, and Radulph will have a second and a witness on his side, and probably multiple supporters from the House. I asked Hermione to stay home because this is all an immoral and criminal act we're planning--"

Remus snorted.

"--And if the Ministry _were_ to show up we'd have a time getting her back out of MLE's cells with no legal guardian available, but I don't think the risk is very great. They rarely crack down even on random members of the public dueling."

"I don't mind," Hermione said calmly from where she sat at the table, nose buried in a book, absently shoveling toast into her mouth with her free hand. "I got Tonks to agree to take me to a muggle book store to meet Ms. Knight - Dean's stepmother, her name's Melanie Knight - so we can talk about the research we've been doing. I've been writing to her all term, but I've never even met her."

"Have fun," said Harry, who would much rather watch a duel - even one that might end in a murder - than listen to Hermione talk about Arithmancy for four hours, no matter how useful the subject was. "Anyone want me to do them an egg?"

The preparations for the duel felt very odd to Harry. Everyone who was coming went and got changed into dress robes except for Narcissa, who was in the least clothing he had seen her wear since their meeting the previous Christmas, when she had arrived at the Tonkses’ house wearing a nightgown. Today, she had a not quite knee-length tunic-like shirt and tight trousers that Sirius identified as dueling clothing.

("Back in the old days she'd have armor to go over it - actually, back in the old days she'd be fighting on horseback and this would be a jousting match - but the spread of wands made most magical armor obsolete," he added, as much to a fascinated but disapproving looking Remus as to Harry. "If you're challenged to an honor duel on the Wizengamot floor or at a party or something you generally just fight in your robes, but for competition duels, or prearranged duels like this, this is more common.")

After dressing up they all went through the Floo back to the seaside ruins Sirius had brought them to last year to practice sacrificial magic, hiked outside the property's protective enchantments, and then used a portkey Sirius had manufactured to go to the main Abbott estate, because - as an amused looking Andromeda reminded them one more time - this was all completely illegal. Both Apparition and the Floo Network, she said, were centrally tracked, Apparition by an enchantment applied at licensing; but portkeys had to have tracking spells applied individually, and Sirius as Lord of a House had the right to make his own without those measures.

The duel would take place in the main Abbott family residence, a medieval estate manor in Oxfordshire. "In the main hall, that's the place where all the family enchantments are pointed," Hannah said, looking slightly queasy as she met them in the front garden. "It was the original building, it used to be a Saxon longhouse, then they extended it a few centuries ago, with the wings..." She trailed off, glancing up at the face of the building. "We'd better go inside."

"Try not to worry," Sirius told her, squeezing her shoulder reassuringly when she stepped in towards him. "Narcissa's fought a lot more duels than your uncle. Worst comes to worst, we'll make sure _you_ get out alright and do what we can for the vassals later."

"I don't want to get your cousin killed either," Hannah said, swallowing.

"It's alright, dove," Narcissa said. Her face was serious, but her eyes were bright, and her movements gave an impression of a dog eager to be let off its leash. She put Harry in mind at the moment of some of the friendlier - but still terrifying - dogs who had belonged to Aunt Marge. "He can't possibly do anything to me in a duel that I haven't earned a few times over from God. Whenever you're ready to open the door?"

Hannah swallowed and turned to grip the handle again.

The inside of the hall's first floor was a single thirty foot room, extending on both directions away from the door. The entrance was across from a hearth big enough that several of them could have stood in it together without having to stoop, with a lintel and hearth carved densely with runes. Looking at it with magic, Harry found, was a recipe for a blistering headache. He looked away and tried to rub his forehead discreetly. To the far left of the hall was a staircase that had presumably been added during some renovation. To the right, three small clusters of people stood. Sirius and Narcissa followed Hannah in this direction, and the rest of their party trailed after a little reluctantly.

It was not hard to identify Radulph Abbott. Sirius had said he was in his sixties, but this was not such an advanced age for a wizard. His hair was still a gleaming chestnut brown, and he had only a few lines on his face. He was wearing clothing similar to Narcissa's, but his dueling tunic was sleeveless and instead he wore gauntlets. He did not actually sneer at Hannah, but something about the set of his lips made it plain he was refraining consciously from it. Next to him was a woman Harry did not know, also in dueling clothing, who must have been his second.

"The others are the Abbott family members and a few major vassals," Sirius said to Harry and Remus. Draco had drifted over to exchange words with his mother and Andromeda, and Hannah was still silent and nauseous looking. "They'll have come to witness and show support. The party across from Radulph is Hannah's, I think - that's her grandfather, he's a member of the Pomfrey family and ineligible to stand as head, so the Death Eaters left him alive, and those are definitely a few of the liberal cousins - and the ones in the middle there aren't expressing support one way or another."

"So we basically just watch, right?" Harry asked quietly.

"It's all we can do for now. Sometimes the result of a duel is contested by the family bylaws, and sometimes someone's accused of cheating, that's why both sides want their own witnesses. They've been known to turn into battles sometimes, too, but I doubt that will happen here. If it does I've asked Remus and Andy to get you and Draco and Hannah out."

Harry swallowed and nodded.

Narcissa had approached Radulph, Hannah at her side, and they were talking. Sirius excused himself to join them, saying as the Head Hannah had requested championship from he had to be involved in the negotiations, and Harry and Remus went to take seats among the spectators on Hannah's side of the room. Harry, Draco and Hannah seemed to be the youngest people present, although Sirius had mentioned that most of the Abbott children were much younger than Hannah, so it might only have been that there weren’t any other teenagers in the family in the first place.

They couldn't hear the negotiations from their seats, but finally Sirius came to sit down with them. Radulph paced out to a spot on the floor, but the duel did not immediately begin. Instead, Narcissa knelt in front of Hannah.

Hannah's voice did not seem to be magically amplified, but now that she was projecting it was clearly audible across the hall. She still sounded rather anxious and unhappy. "I, Hannah Angharad Abbott, Lord of House Abbott, appoint you my champion in honor and arms. Do you accept?"

Narcissa's voice was calm and clear. "I, Narcissa Vera Black, of House Black, accept the responsibility and honor of fighting as a champion on behalf of House Abbott."

"To the extent of your knowledge, is there any matter of honor, law or ability which would prevent you from discharging this duty honorably?"

"Upon my honor, there is not."

"Swear your oath and rise." Hannah's voice strengthened suddenly here. She extended her hand, palm down.

Narcissa took Hannah’s hand in both of hers and said, "I swear my service in arms to the Lord of House Abbott until this duty is discharged, upon my honor and the honor of my House and Lord." 

Harry felt a sort of pressure building as she spoke the oath; here it rose to a sudden peak, and then dropped abruptly. Only then did he notice that a number of the witnesses were murmuring to each other, some appearing surprised. This might not, then, be an expected part of the proceedings, but he didn't want to distract someone by asking yet.

Narcissa rose and the two of them walked out to face Radulph, while the dark haired woman in dueling clothes went to stand at his shoulder, but the duel still was not, apparently, ready to start. Radulph seemed to have been waiting for them to approach. When they were all in position he said, "I, Radulph Julian, come in challenge to Lord Hannah Angharad for leadership of the House Abbott."

"On what grounds are the challenge made?" Whatever had suddenly strengthened Hannah was holding, still. Her voice was strong and clear.

"On the grounds of unfitness for leadership and betrayal of the ideals of House Abbott," Radulph said, looking at Hannah coldly.

Hannah did not flinch. "Name examples or forfeit your case, Radulph."

"My lord's political ideals are known," Radulph said. His gaze moved from Hannah finally to sweep the waiting crowd. Harry tried to tally the groups, but wasn't sure what the numbers meant, especially as he did not know who was actually an Abbott relative. "She does not defend the nobility of our family or the sanctity of our world. She has denigrated the institution of our House and government in public. A lord who does not respect the institution of our position is not fit to command it." 

To his surprise, Harry felt perfectly competent to translate this in his head without Hermione: 'sanctity of our world' was undoubtedly the sort of hippogriff dung Voldemort had peddled to the Wizengamot in the memory Dumbledore had shown him last year, and 'denigrating the institution of our House and government' probably meant Hannah had spoken in favor of Amelia Bones's reforms.

"Do you dispute that my late mother, Lord Angharad Cecelia, shared these ideals?" Hannah asked.

"I do not," Radulph said. "Lord Angharad acted, also, as an enemy of her own house."

"Yet a challenge was issued only after she died, and the House was left in the hands of her minor daughter," Hannah said.

There was more murmuring from the audience. Someone behind Harry hissed, audibly, "Coward!" 

Radulph did not flinch. He waited for the whispering to subside before saying, "The demand of a child to lead the House is also grounds for declaring her unfit. Hannah. You were asked to yield to a regent."

"And I have refused," Hannah said evenly. "The challenge must be sustained by two adult family members or six notables of the estate. Does the challenger have this degree of support?"

"I do," Radulph said, and looked back at the supporters.

"Supporters, please name yourselves," Hannah said.

A woman with a heavy gold braid stood up. "I, Georgina Longbottom Abbott, sustain my husband's challenge."

There was a long pause; then a man stood, slowly. His shoulder length hair had gone entirely gray. "I," he said gravelly, "Mathias Cadwallon Abbott, sustain my cousin's challenge."

"Very well," Hannah said, voice tiring but still confident. "The challenge has been raised, supported and sustained. According to House law, it must be decided by combat to death or yield. If all combatants are rendered unconscious, a party is considered to have yielded. An opponent who flees beyond the boundaries of the circle is considered to have yielded immediately. As a minor of fifteen years and a woman I invoke my right to a champion."

"Is the birth record of Lord Hannah Angharad in record?" Radulph said.

Harry twitched angrily. "It's just a formality," Draco muttered beside him. “If there wasn’t a birth certificate or a baptismal record they’d have to call witnesses to her identity.”

"The birth record is in evidence," called the man Sirius had pointed out as Hannah's grandfather. 

"Have witnesses examined it?"

Sirius took the birth certificate and stood and announced himself as Lord Sirius Orion Black, then acknowledged the birth certificate and the accuracy of Hannah's birth year and gender; a second man took it from him and announced himself as the representative of another family before it was returned to Hannah's grandfather.

"I thought this was all illegal?" Harry said quietly to Draco while this was going on.

Draco shrugged. "The Ministry says that fighting duels to the death, or for any purpose but recreation, education and competition, is illegal. But the Houses existed before the Ministry and they're used to making their own laws. All of that procedure didn't just go away when the Ministry made it a criminal act to follow it."

"I guess," Harry said, watching. Hannah's right to a champion seemed to have been established, and she was introducing Narcissa now. "Hang on. Hannah doesn't get a second besides your mum, does she? So why go to all of this fuss to call hers something else?"

"Radulph's second can only take over if he dies or is knocked out without yielding," Draco said quietly. "You get two defenders of the cause, since legally that's what Radulph's fighting for, not _himself_. Hannah having a right to a champion means she doesn't have to stand and take Radulph hurting her until he kills her, or knocks her out, before Narcissa can fight on her behalf. 

"There are a few categories of people who get the right in duels between families according to custom - women and children, but also people with certain infirmities, squibs and muggles, and anyone untrained in the use of a wand. Then the Houses have their own laws on it and they can be different. Black women don't automatically have a right to a champion in internal duels, for example. They don't _have_ to use it, obviously. Mum would have the right in a duel with anyone outside the House, but she can also be a champion herself. But if somebody called out, I don't know, Neville once we're in seventh year, he would have to fight himself or yield."

"That's really sick," Harry muttered.

Draco shrugged. "The laws against dueling were passed for a reason."

Hannah was finally retreating to stand with her supporters, face very white. Radulph's second, whose name Harry had missed while talking to Draco, moved back as well. Finally, Radulph and Narcissa bowed, wands in hand, and Narcissa cast the first spell the instant they both straightened. What followed was nothing remotely like the duels Harry had watched before in Dueling Club. It bore the most resemblance to the moments he had spent silently fighting for his life with Ulrike Selwyn, but of course Ulrike had been trying to take him alive, and he had been more interested in running away than standing and fighting.

Narcissa and Radulph Abbott were both adult duelists, aiming to kill, and they were boxed together into a clear circle of floor like being trapped in a meat grinder. Shields flickered into the air in front of them and were slashed apart by curses almost faster than Harry could see, so that the arena was covered in a haze of flickering lights and fog, rather than being split by individual spells. Narcissa moved more than Radulph, circling around in an attempt to catch him off guard or dodging spells, while Radulph stood steadily and turned to face her, conserving movements behind his protections. Both of them were rapidly sweating and gasping with effort. 

The protections were nowhere near adequate, except insofar as neither combatant had gone down dead or unconscious. Curses slipped through regularly, weakened but not stopped, opening gashes or horribly twisting body parts. Periodically one of them would heal the most severe injuries to keep on fighting, but any pause left an opening for their opponent to inflict new, worse ones. 

Radulph gave ground rapidly when Narcissa hit him with a curse that made his left hand start to wither from the fingertips up; he got it paused at the elbow and reversed rapidly, but in the process Narcissa had boxed him in with ominously glowing ribbons that looked like molten lava in the air, even if she could not hammer directly through the shield he had raised.

Radulph managed to dispel these ribbons of fire, but Narcissa had backed him nearly to the edge of the circle inscribed for the duel as he healed his hand, and he was now cornered and white faced himself. There was a clash of spells Harry had no hope of identifying; one sliced against Narcissa's cheek, and while it seemed to have been defused somewhat by her counter, it left a palm sized area raw and skinless, blood trickling down her jaw to stain the shoulder of her tunic. 

Narcissa doubled over, and Radulph raised his wand triumphantly, but it was a feint - she thrust her wand forward in a piercing gesture, and Radulph suddenly screamed and fell to his knees. At first Harry didn't see what the damage was. Then blood rapidly soaked through his tunic over his abdomen, dripping to the floor in rivulets. Harry glanced at the watchers, expecting his second to jump in, but she was standing, tense and still - unable to enter the fight until Radulph either died, or passed out.

"Yield," Narcissa said, low and clear.

Radulph's face tightened and he raised his wand; when Narcissa didn't flinch, he directed it at the wound, prepared to heal himself and keep fighting.

" _Expelliarmus_ ," Narcissa said aloud, and caught the wand. "Yield, Abbott."

"Kill me," he said, glaring.

"Oh, Lord," a woman Harry didn't recognize muttered to his left.

"He thinks Black won't let her," a man said to her.

" _Crucio_ ," Narcissa said, voice still calm. 

Radulph screamed.

"Why not do it? Or Stun him?" Draco asked, sounding strained.

"She doesn't want to fight Araminta wounded," Andromeda said. She sounded just as calm as Narcissa. "She only gets two minutes to heal herself before his second comes on."

" _Yield_ , Abbott!" Narcissa called. "Or shall I keep going? I won't let you pass out!” She proclaimed a complicated incantation Harry didn’t recognize, and the blood flow abruptly stopped. "Cr--"

"I _yield_!" Radulph snarled, and the hall went dead silent.

The first to speak was his second, the woman Andromeda had called Araminta. "Well, it was a good show, Cissy," she said, inclining her head to the participants. "I'll help him up to bow, shall I?" 

Her footsteps echoed loudly in the hall as she walked, not particularly quickly, into the circle to help a glaring Radulph to his feet. He obviously needed the support. His face was chalky, and he trembled as he bowed, even with his second holding him up.

Narcissa inclined her head in response, then turned and walked to Hannah, bowing much lower. Hannah, who looked nearly as sick as Radulph, extended her hand, allowing Narcissa to kiss it, then said, "Radulph Abbott. Your challenge was met and defended. Do you acknowledge your defeat?"

The strength in her voice earlier was gone, and she sounded shaky and tired.

"I acknowledge it," Radulph gasped.

"Your personal property and offices of the House are all forfeit to the seat of Lord Abbott in recompense for your challenge, as are the property and offices of your supporters. Do you contest?" This statement raised a clamor briefly in the crowd, especially those on Radulph’s side of the room.

"I do not,” Radulph said, glaring.

"Then you are dismissed. Someone get him to St. Mungo's," Hannah said to no one in particular, and went to collapse into a seat. Her grandfather was immediately on his feet and coming over. Harry saw Hannah twist and bury her face in his shoulder, and looked away rapidly.

Narcissa, now, was swaying on her feet, and Andromeda and Sirius were going to her. Harry saw Andromeda running her wand over her and her lips moving, and assumed they were healing her.

"So that's everything?" he asked Draco, quietly.

Draco nodded. "Hannah invoking the forfeit clause should help suppress anyone else who feels the same way, without having to kill anyone. And they agreed they'd swear Mother in as her retainer for a year and a day instead of just calling her service discharged after the one duel - Hannah's going to award her one of Radulph's old properties to make it official and everything - so that should help." He smiled tightly. "No one is going to want to fight my mother after that."

"It isn't going to get her in trouble that she used the Cruciatus on him?" Harry asked uncertainly. He wasn't sure how he felt about it himself, for all it had probably been better than murdering him outright.

Draco shrugged. "I doubt it. Anyone who turns her in has to admit that they stood here and watched the duel until that point, and I don't think anyone will be particularly motivated. If she had thrown it around as a shield breaker the way Grandmother taught her and her sisters to, possibly, but she was within rights to kill him when he refused to yield, even obviously defeated. Forcing him into yielding without doing real physical damage will probably be seen as merciful, by most people here. I mean, she could have blinded him or started chopping pieces off, too."

"Right," Harry said shakily, and searched for a change of topics. "Who was the woman seconding him? I didn't hear her name, earlier, but Andy said Narcissa didn't want to have to fight her wounded."

Draco gave him a surprised look. "That's their cousin, Dorea Black's daughter. Araminta Potter Meliflua.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We know Araminta Meliflua who wanted to bring back muggle hunting was Sirius's "mother's cousin." Of course, Sirius's parents are cousins, so if he specifically describes her as his mother's, she's probably more closely related to his mother than his father. That would imply Araminta's the child of one of Pollux Black or Irma Crabbe's siblings if we're using the extracanon info; we don't know anything about Irma's family, but Pollux's sister Dorea married Charlus Potter on the tree, so Araminta being a Potter by birth is one option. Of course, I've rearranged the tree a lot, but once this idea occurred to me I liked it.
> 
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	21. Branches and Brambles

Harry was exhausted by the events of the morning, but they hadn’t actually taken long. The duel itself had been only fifteen minutes - an eternity when you were in the circle, Narcissa commented, but an efficient use of time from the other side. Sirius asked if Draco wanted to stay with Hannah, but while he went over to say goodbye he came back shortly, saying they weren't close enough for her to want him at a time like this.

They took Sirius's portkey back to the seaside foundations and Flooed home before lunch. Hermione was not back. She and Tonks had expected to be gone several hours while she talked over her notes with Ms. Knight in person, so this was no surprise. Remus offered to take Harry to meet them later, and he agreed, thinking he didn’t want to be stuck in the house for the entirety of break. But he needed to sit down and eat, and let his body absorb that he was no longer watching a fight for someone's life.

Around three o'clock they set out. Remus Side Along Apparated them to a sheltered alleyway that he said was a common Apparition point; then they began the walk to the bookstore. Harry found muggle London almost foreign after so long away. The noise and smell of the cars, in particular, was a shock. Remus smiled when he jumped at a particularly loud truck and said, "It's easy to get used to being away, isn't it?"

"I guess," Harry said. "Er - this direction, right?" He felt slightly awkward being out with Remus alone. While they had spoken several times in his third year, and of course Harry had been around Remus with Dumbledore and over the summer, there had always been someone else present as a buffer. He wasn't sure how you were supposed to act with an adult who had once been a teacher, but no longer was, and was now also family. Sirius had been his godfather first.

"Yes. I confess I'm curious after having done the job myself, how is Moody's Defense class going?"

"Er, we just finished detecting magical spying methods. Before that we did cursed objects, and reviewed and advanced dueling spell work, and we started out on magical disguises - using them, and identifying them and removing them."

"I heard you did a very impressive job implementing that last item in November," Remus remarked.

"Oh," Harry said, surprised, although of course Sirius would have told everyone else in the House about it. The total lack of consequences had made the entire kidnapping attempt feel almost like a dream to him. Even his prohibition from Hogsmeade wouldn't matter until January, leaving only the worry Asteria refused to suffer from everyone else. "Er, yeah, I guess. It wouldn't have helped much if Asteria hadn't walked out of Honeydukes right then."

"On the contrary, we can never say what might have happened. You told Kingsley that you had hoped someone would look out a window and identify Ulrike Selwyn, and it's entirely possible that someone would have, and you might have been recovered because of it if you were taken."

"I guess," Harry said. He tested out the idea in his mind that an alternate sequence of events might not have been disastrous, even if he had not fixed his initial mistakes.

They made it through several blocks of crowded shopfronts. Harry was starting to feel relaxed again in the streets by the time he pushed open the door of the bookstore open. There was a cafe section where Hermione was supposed to be waiting, and Harry made his way to it to look.

Hermione and Ms. Knight were sitting in a corner. Hermione had arranged her back to the wall so that she had a view of both the rest of the shop and the door outside, and she waved to them, prompting Ms. Knight to turn and face them, too. Dean's stepmother was a small, very dark skinned woman with bright turquoise earrings and a quick smile. She stood up to shake hands with Remus so they could introduce themselves. Meanwhile Harry hugged Hermione hello, allowing her to lean in and ask how it had gone.

"Alright," he muttered. "Narcissa won, so Hannah's still Head, and she didn't kill anyone to do it. It was pretty horrible, though - I'll tell you more later."

"I'm glad to hear that," Hermione said softly. "I was so worried." Then she continued in a normal tone, "Melanie, this is my best friend Harry Potter, I told you about him before - Harry, this is Ms. Melanie Knight--"

"Melanie is fine, my mother is a school teacher and Ms. Knight always makes me whip around looking for her," she said, shaking Harry's hand as though he were another adult. "Hermione mentioned she was visiting you and your godfather over the holidays, would that be Remus?"

"My partner, Sirius Black, actually," Remus said cheerfully. "He's got some business to deal with, and I thought I wouldn't mind the excuse to come browse."

"You all have such interesting names," Melanie said. "Claire told me she wished she'd gone with some of her wilder ideas for Dean. She spent so much time worrying he would be teased in school, and instead Dean stands out just as much."

It was very strange, Harry thought, to stand here in a book shop making small talk, when a few hours ago he had been watching Narcissa cast the Cruciatus Curse in front of thirty people, blood streaming down the side of her face. Remus asked after a philosophy book Melanie had in her stack of purchases, and the two of them went off on a tangent about the history of Buddhism and something about British colonialism. Hermione excused herself and led Harry off into the rest of the store then, saying she'd come back and look over the equations later, and thanking Harry for coming once she was out of earshot.

"--Melanie got here first so I didn't have any time to browse earlier," she said. "And of course I'm happy to go over the equations but I'm not sure if I'll be able to get to another muggle bookstore the rest of break, and I only got one trip last summer what with Bellatrix just out of Azkaban." She waved to a woman Harry realized suddenly was Tonks, loitering by a book display with a convenient view of all of the shop exits. Tonks had turned her hair a rather nondescript brown color and lengthened it to her chin, so that Harry had not recognized her at first.

"Can't have that," Harry said. "You might die of book deprivation."

"Exactly," Hermione said primly, lips twitching, then added, "Tell me about the duel?"

It was not the most pleasant thing to recount, but Harry did his best to remember all of the details, particularly of the tedious formalities, which he knew Hermione would care about. She listened intently and with frustrated twitching gestures, like she was longing for a quill. Finally she whipped a ball point pen out of her pocket and began scribbling notes in the back of the notebook with her Arithmancy equations in it, to Harry's amusement. 

"I'm sure Sirius could explain all this to you later," he pointed out.

"You'll have noticed other things," Hermione said defensively, but she laughed, too. "--Okay, that's enough for now, let's look around a bit - do you care where? We probably shouldn't be out of sight of each other."

"I don't really read, wherever you want is fine," Harry said, surprised Hermione had asked.

"I know you don't like _schoolwork_ , but fiction...?" Hermione stared at him in bafflement when he shook his head. "Didn't you read _anything_ before Hogwarts? I know the magical world doesn't have any."

"Hermione," Harry said, face feeling hot, "I lived in a cupboard. I never got to watch TV either, unless they showed us something in school, and then Dudley sat in front of me and talked so I couldn't enjoy the story."

"What about books assigned in class?"

"He'd rip the pages up in my copy, or I'd get shut up without light and wouldn't be able to do homework," Harry said. "Do we _have_ to talk about this?" he asked, seeing Hermione grow furious. "It's been years and years since they could do any of that except with my summer work, even before I went to live with Sirius they couldn't do much about Hogwarts."

"Suddenly," Hermione said, voice growing sarcastic, "I understand a lot about your work habits. Alright, we'll find something for you to read now."

"I already have homework for the holidays," Harry protested, feeling certain his arguments would be futile.

"This isn't _homework_ ," Hermione said. "And I promise I won't bug you about reading it once we're out of the store - just try it? Please?"  
‘  
"Alright," Harry said, reluctantly. Hermione promptly grabbed his wrist and dragged him off into the shelves. She seemed to have forgotten about her intention to buy books for herself. Instead she based in front of the shelves muttering to herself about what he _had_ to read and rapidly ruling books back out again with comments like "--No, that makes no sense if you don't already read sci fi--" or, making him feel somewhat insulted, "--That's really a bit long and complicated--"

"I manage our homework fine," he pointed out, uncertain why he was arguing for longer books he wasn't sure he wanted to read.

"You manage anything the teacher repeats in _lessons_ fine," Hermione said. "And if I explain it to you that's fine, too, but if it's just in the books--"

"I can _read_ , Hermione. I look things up for essays all the time."

"You said in your Astronomy essay that one of Jupiter's moons was covered in _mice_."

"I misheard Professor Sinistra," Harry said, scarlet. “That has nothing to do with the textbook.”

"Didn't you think that was a little bit strange? Possibly worth checking in a book first?"

"It's not like most of what they tell us to repeat makes any more sense," Harry said. "I don't worry about that, I just copy it down." Then, because Hermione was looking both horrified and indignant, he pointed randomly at the shelf and said, "Have you read that one with the polar bear?"

Hermione glanced over and brightened immediately. "I read that one over the summer, I bet you'd like it - Lyra kind of reminded me of a younger version of the three of us, actually - why don't you read the first few pages and see what you think?" she said, pulling the book out and handing it to him. Harry wasn't really sure what he had meant to accomplish, but it had redirected Hermione from implying he was an idiot, so he opened the book obediently. 

It had been years since he had read any fiction, at least since he had left muggle school, but he got his bearings after a few paragraphs. It reminded him a bit of the summer before his third year, reading the more story-like portions of his history textbooks and hearing more about them from Florean Fortescue on the patio of his ice cream parlor. To his surprise, he got caught up in the story about the little girl hiding in a wardrobe and spying on a meeting. He could immediately see why Hermione had said Lyra reminded her of them.

When he looked up he was surprised to realize time had passed. Hermione had piled several other books next to him and seemed to be browsing for herself, now. Shrugging, Harry glanced over the others and read a few pages of another. Reading standing up in the store was awkward, though, and he was unpleasantly aware that they were supposed to be wary in case of attack, so he browsed idly, looking mostly at covers, while Hermione read. He still didn't see what she found so appealing about, say, rereading their school books repeatedly, but he could admit that reading stories for fun made sense.

Hermione had collected eight or ten books - probably nowhere near enough for her for free time for an entire term, Harry thought - and had her nose stuck firmly in one book when he hit on a name that sounded familiar from somewhere. He reread _Margaret Wright_ and frowned. Hadn't Cassie's lover, the muggle woman who was murdered with her, been a writer called that? Well, plenty of authors kept selling books after they were dead, he thought, picking it up with a sort of sad curiosity. Cassiopeia's portrait didn't talk much about her family. Harry thought she found it too painful, even though the portrait had never met Margaret herself.

The book was a fantasy about fairies. They weren’t the tiny, insect-like creatures used for decoration in the Wizarding world or the friendly ones he vaguely remembered from muggle children's toys, but were human-like with powerful magic. More specifically, the back said that it was about a human village terrorized by fairies who took a tax on the human children for some unknown purpose. Harry thought of the more horrifying bits he had heard about Dark pureblood families, especially wealthy families with isolated estates like the Malfoys, and shuddered. Margaret must have talked to Cassie about her world's politics. He flipped idly through the book, wondering if he should show Sirius or if he would only be upset by it, when his eye caught on a picture. He pulled it open, and then he stared.

There was a photo of the author on the back page. Margaret was an older looking woman dressed in a men's button down shirt, with curly hair that had gone mostly gray. But this was not what had drawn his attention. 

Behind Margaret's chair stood another woman. It was plainly Cassiopeia, but her clothing, her bearing, and even the expression on her face were utterly unlike the cold pureblood woman in her portrait. Cassiopeia’s face was still fairly young, perhaps under forty if Margaret seemed to be around sixty, and her hair very dark. It hung in a simple braid down her back, and she was dressed in jeans. She was smiling, not the familiar sardonic or mysterious little half smiles Cassiopeia's portrait gave, but widely and freely. She looked, in a word, happy.

Under the photograph Harry read, _Margaret Wright lives in London with several cats and her domestic partner, C._ The description was given in present tense, and Harry couldn't believe a muggle book would have referred openly to a same sex partner like that if it wasn't fairly recent, not after talking to Sirius and Remus about the subject more. He flipped rapidly to the front of the book. 

The first edition had been published only two years ago.

"Hermione," he hissed.

"In a minute," she said, turning another page in her book.

" _Hermione_ ," Harry said. "Come here. I think Cassie's alive."

Hermione got very excited quickly seeing the book, and insisted they needed to talk to Cassiopeia to find out for sure. But the question of how to get a message to a fantasy writer was a complicated one. They argued about it for a few minutes. Then Hermione took the book and said she'd go ask if the bookstore knew anything about author signings or anything, and if not she'd have them help look up the publisher's number so she could call and ask them. She hurried back a few minutes later saying she had gotten very lucky. Another city bookstore actually had Margaret in to sign copies regularly, as she lived nearby, and the shop employee had suggested they check the schedule there. 

"I'll get Tonks to take us," Hermione said breathlessly.

"Should we tell Sirius?" Harry asked. 

His initial excitement was starting to fade slightly over the subject of how to find Cassiopeia to talk to her, knowing she was alive. It had occurred to him that Sirius's exoneration had been front page news for weeks the summer before last. Cassiopeia could not possibly _not_ know Sirius was free and considerably more liberal than previous Heads of the family if she was paying any attention to magical Britain at all. She knew where the family home was, and could easily have contacted them. He explained this to Hermione tentatively.

She frowned. "I mean, you're right, I suppose, but I still think we should at least talk to her and tell her we've found out. If we could, Bellatrix could, too, Sirius says she can navigate the muggle world alright. And if it's just us we're not really a threat, are we, the way the head of the House would be? _We're_ just a couple of teenagers."

"So we won't tell Sirius we're looking for her, then?" Harry said, feeling no more certain of this path than the other.

"All we're doing," Hermione said primly, "Is going to a book signing. There's no reason we should have to tell him anything more."

They made their purchases - Hermione keeping Margaret's novel in with her stack - and went back to the adults then. Hermione stopped to check Tonks would take them to the other bookstore first. Tonks raised her eyebrows but agreed, readily, offering to swing by after this. Hermione quickly clarified that there was supposed to be a book signing there and she wanted to call and check the schedule first, and Tonks said that as long as she was off she would take them. Then Hermione went to finish her conversation with Melanie. Harry sat down nearby, head whirling.

He had always known - or, at least, since their first introduction - that Cassiopeia's portrait was not the actual woman. In fact, a few conversations with the portrait had driven home why portraiture was not really immortality. A portrait had a copy of the subject's memories, but it was a separate consciousness and it might change completely independently, or fail to change when the subject did. So, for example, the portrait of Sirius's little brother in Grimmauld Place had said a number of foul things to him over politics, even though the real Regulus had been killed for leaving Voldemort in the end. 

Harry had never expected this to come up with Cassiopeia. She had died when Sirius was just a baby, after all. There had only been the portrait. But something about that image - the woman in casual muggle clothing, grinning more at Margaret than the camera, looking relaxed and pleased - had really brought home the difference between a portrait and its subject. He found he was extremely curious about Sirius's aunt, and it was probably inevitable that Hermione would be driven to seek her out, having been avidly talking about magical theory with the portrait for almost a year. But Harry found himself wondering if Cassiopeia herself, who had never met any of her portrait's students and never contacted Sirius, would want to meet _them_.

When they were home, Hermione went off to call the bookshop and came back with a funny expression. "Didn't they answer?" Harry asked.

"No, no, they did - and it's not signings exactly, there's a regular book group there and she comes to it, and she doesn't mind doing signings at it, so if we can go Thursday evening we should see her. It's just that it's a gay book store. I probably should have expected that, knowing what we do about her and Aunt Cassie, but that must be why Tonks gave me that look," Hermione said.

"Probably," Harry said, laughing slightly. "It's not like she'll mind."

The bookstore had been a good distraction after the rather horrible morning. Harry and Hermione were distracted both by speculating about Cassiopeia and by the book purchases. Harry had more or less forgotten that Hermione had persuaded him to try out reading for fun until she got hers out. She kept her word and did not actually badger him about reading, but she kept shooting glances at him that made it clear she _wanted_ to. Since Sirius had left to deal with business over the arrangements with Narcissa and the Abbotts, Draco was visiting Druella and her mother for the first time since finding out he wasn’t a blood relation, and Remus had gone out to pick up takeaway, Harry didn't really have anything else to do if Hermione was occupied. Eventually he pulled out the first book he had started reading, which was called _Northern Lights_. Some of it reminded him of being in a particularly confusing magic theory lecture, but he got up in it and was surprised to realize how long it had been when Remus came upstairs and called them for dinner.

"Well?" Hermione said, almost bouncing with nervous excitement. "What did you think?"

"Okay, you were right," Harry said. "It _is_ more fun if it's not for class. What do you think yours would be, if you had a daemon?"

"Well, I'm a witch, so presumably it would be a bird, but that's sort of a boring answer - oh, and you haven't gotten that far yet, have you?"

"There are witches in this?"

"Yes, but they work differently since Philip Pullman is a muggle," Hermione said. "Anyway if I ignore that I've always liked otters--"

Good natured argument about what animal represented the people they knew best took them downstairs. They explained the idea to Remus, who hadn't read the book, and then had a good time trying to come up with an animal that suitably represented Dumbledore until Sirius came back, halfway through the meal.

The next morning, Harry came downstairs sleepily several hours late, musing on how strange it was to get to sleep in. Before the last year, Aunt Petunia had generally woken him before dawn over the summer, and eating breakfast required waking not much later for school, so on Christmas and Easter break he usually woke early by habit.

They had a surprise visitor in the kitchen.

"Good morning, Harry," Dumbledore said affably from where he sat over the Daily Prophet with Sirius. "Remus, my compliments on the kedgeree."

"Er, morning, sir," Harry said, feeling slightly disconcerted. "Morning, Sirius, Remus. Is Hermione up?"

"She went over to Grimmauld Place, said something about wanting to compare notes with Draco over her Potions essay," Sirius said. 

"Right, so we'll see her sometime around dinner," Harry said, collecting a bowl and sitting down to eat. 

"Harry helped me cook, he's very good in a kitchen," Remus said to Dumbledore.

"Ah, I hadn't suspected from Severus, but then he always has been rather biased on the subject of you," Dumbledore said, eyes twinkling. "I'm sure you're wondering why I'm here."

"A bit," Harry said truthfully, trying to subtly edge around and see if any horrible murders were headlining in the _Prophet_.

"Well, the first matter concerned Sirius," Dumbledore said, inclining his head towards him. "I believe you heard that a portrait had tipped off the Ministry as to your library adventures? Cassiopeia Black's portrait graciously assisted me in investigating, and we were able to track the problem to the least popular of Hogwarts' Headmasters, Phineas Nigellus Black. Sirius, as acting Head, is able to prevent further misbehavior on that end.

"I also hoped you'd be willing to accompany me to Little Hangleton," Dumbledore continued. "I am afraid I have found no more plausible leads on the other sites, but I think it time to investigate the Gaunt cottage. It will most likely bear little fruit, as I told you before, but there are worse occupations than a walk in the snow on holiday."

"Yeah, sure!" Harry said. "Is Remus coming again?"

"I thought I'd let Sirius go if you're all right with it," Remus said. "I've got the proofs back and need to work on them for my wyvern book, and Sirius has been longing for an excuse to leave the papers for a day for months."

"A walk in the snow sounds good about now," Sirius agreed, "I've only just finished writing back to Clelia MacDougal to tell her I'm not marrying her sixteen year old daughter..." He rolled his eyes. Harry's stomach lurched. He had mostly forgotten about Pansy Parkinson's engagement to Lucius Malfoy, as he never normally spoke to her, but Sirius's comment had reminded him.

After breakfast, the three of them Apparated to the same signpost Harry had seen in Bob Ogden's memory last year. The hedgerows were more overgrown and the lane less maintained, and of course there was snow and a dismal sky instead of the bright spring he had seen before. Aside from that little seemed to have changed in the past seventy years. 

Sirius changed into Padfoot and raced up and down the snowy lane, cheerfully spraying them with debris. Harry packed a snowball and tossed it at him, and he gleefully grabbed it out of the air in an explosion of snow. Laughing, Harry threw several more for Padfoot to catch while Dumbledore watched with amusement, before they settled into a brisk but calmer walk. For all he had been on better terms with the Headmaster lately, Harry had not forgotten last spring. He was keeping his Occlumency shields up, but he tried not to think loudly about Cassiopeia anyway.

Fortunately, if that was the word, he had had other recent revelations that he could readily discuss. "Sir," he said carefully, aware that the particular circumstances were not something to be discussed, "Can I ask something?"

"Certainly," Dumbledore said, face amiable. Entirely by accident, Harry picked up a flicker of dread from him, and slapped down his own Legilimency hard. It would be mortifying to be caught using Legilimency on Dumbledore after shouting him for the same thing a few months ago.

He went on, "I'd always thought that there weren't any Potters left, and that was why I was sent to live with the Dursleys. But I, er, met Araminta Meliflua recently and someone told me her maiden name was Potter. I didn't _like_ her, obviously, she probably would have been a lot worse," he said quickly, thinking of how amused Araminta had seemed to haul the shaking Radulph Abbott up to bow to the teenage girl he had tried to murder, "But I was wondering how she wasn't able to get custody? And - are there any other family members who might be... decent?"

"Ah, Madam Meliflua," Dumbledore said contemplatively. "I wondered if you might meet. She normally votes the Meliflua seat in the Wizengamot, being an accomplished duelist and of - ah - strong political opinions. You are quite right that she might have been worse - at one point in the seventies she actually tried to get muggle hunting legalized--"

Harry choked.

"--A hopeless venture even as influential as Voldemort was at the time. Perhaps fortunately, Madam Meliflua had no interest in you and declared it openly, as she detests children. It is possible that she might speak to you at some point as you obtain adult recognition but I rather think she will not. She is to all appearances quite happy in her marriage. 

"To answer your question, there are four other Potter women living, all married. Neville Longbottom's grandmother is one, Augusta Longbottom nee Potter. The others are Augusta's older sister, Andrea Selwyn nee Potter, whose grandson died in service to Voldemort and who I rather suspect had several Death Eaters among her children as well; Geva Macmillan nee Potter, who is of their generation; and Dillena MacDougal nee Potter, who was in the same year as your father. 

"Dillena MacDougal is the closest in your family, as your second cousin, and I did speak to her about you, but she had lost her parents and was very young and felt she was not equipped. I see that you are unhappy with this response, but I can only tell you what happened. Geva Macmillan was willing but expressed that she was elderly and poor and might not be the best option. I am getting to the rest of my reasoning - we did not quite reach it in our last discussion.

"The others, besides Dillena, are rather distant cousins. Symon Weasley, head of that house, was married to your grandfather's first cousin, although she was murdered late in the war; and Amelia Bones's mother, who died when she was very young, was a Potter, a rather distant cousin of your father's who was orphaned young and raised by his parents as their foster child. Either of them would probably have been the most suitable, but unfortunately they were not likely to prevail in the custody suit that would inevitably have occurred if your fostering had been brought into open court, and as an infant you would have been unable to express any preferences for the court to honor." Dumbledore paused.

Harry glanced at Sirius, cheerfully digging a hole in the snow, and tried to order this new information. He had fully expected the answer to be no, and now his head was swimming. "I have that much family?" he said. "And still..." 

"Yes and no," Dumbledore said carefully. "You understand that the legal definition of a House does not necessarily precisely align with the ideal of family. Dillena is your second cousin, Geva your second cousin twice removed; Araminta is your third cousin, in the same generation numerically although much older. Andrea and Augusta are technically first cousins twice removed, but their branch of the family was very distant from yours by the time of your birth. The only one of them who ever met you was Dillena, who knew your father better because they were in the same year and because her marriage was finalized the year between his parents' deaths and his, and James had to approve some of the arrangements.

"A muggle, or a common member of our world - like, I would note, me - would quite possibly not consider them family, only people who happened to share the same surname and a distant relationship. They were legally members of the same noble House at birth, but all of them had married by the time your custody came up as an issue, and under contracts that joined them as members of their husbands' Houses. I did consider opening the matter in the months following your parents' deaths, once we thought we knew who the traitor was and he had been dealt with.

"As none of the married Potter women were very close relations, none had much relationship with your parents - or, truthfully, grandparents - and none were then members of the House of Potter, their legal status was questionable. None had a clear right to you, and I could not guarantee who would have obtained the Wizengamot's endorsement as guardian, but I had a few guesses. Dillena was young, and Geva poor. Araminta, fortunately, made it clear she was not interested in even a pretense of custody - she was not actually a Death Eater as far as anyone can tell, only a blood purist, and would not have gone out of the way to murder the heir to her natal family - but Andrea had not disclaimed interest, and I was concerned she might have designs on the idea, as I was concerned about her sister."

Harry opened his mouth to ask why he would be concerned about Augusta Longbottom, thought of Neville, his first year, telling them about how he had discovered he had magic when his Uncle Algie dropped him out a window, and closed it.

"I see you have some notion of why," Dumbledore said, then hesitated. "I am not certain if Neville has been told that he had siblings."

" _Siblings?_ " Harry asked. "What - happened to them?" His first thought was that Bellatrix had done something, but then he remembered that they were discussing _Augusta's_ unsuitability as a guardian.

"Officially, their deaths were accidents," Dumbledore said, and his voice was tired and bleak. "Edgar was seven at the time of his death and Ursula, who died the same year as your parents, was six. I am not certain if Neville's magic assisted him or if he was only given more time to present it, because his parents were not likely to produce another try. I know that his family suspected him. It is... not uncommon for pureblood families to murder squibs. It is horrific, and it is tragic, but it is not remarked upon, and the Wizengamot is full of members of those families, who are hardly likely to prosecute their peers for it."

Harry swallowed. "He told us - first year," he said. "His family thought he didn't have magic until his uncle dropped him out a window and he bounced - he said it like it was an accident, he was trying to scare magic out of Neville and someone distracted him and he let go. He said that was why his uncle bought him his toad, like it was a good thing."

Dumbledore smiled tiredly. "Of course they would not tell Neville they were willing to murder him if he failed the test after he passed it, if it was premeditated at all. It may be easier on the conscience to allow such accidents, to arrange for them to be likely, without admitting the purpose even to oneself. However, the Longbottom family is the highest ranked on the list of your relations, Augusta wealthy and respectable, with a son tortured into insanity as a tragic victim and a child your age in the house already, but only one. I thought it very likely that if she sought your custody she would obtain it."

Harry felt a cold nose at his wrist above his glove and jumped. Sirius had come back over at some point and had nudged him. He leaned gratefully into Padfoot's shoulder and pet his ears. "Well," he said, voice unsteady, "I can see why you didn't want me to go to her, sir."

"Yes, I rather thought you might." Dumbledore shook his head. "But we are here," he said, and gestured at the small, extremely grubby building they had come upon. There was still an extremely sad looking, tattered dead snake hanging from the front door, although the door itself hung on its hinges.

Sirius shifted back to Padfoot at once. "Stand back," he said. "There's a curse about six feet from the walls."

"Yes, I see it," Dumbledore said, eyes narrowing. "I seem to have been foolish to overlook this location for so long. Harry, while I will guide you through the relevant detection spells once I am certain they are safe, please stand back for now."

Harry backed up a little ways down the path into the woods, and watched Sirius and Dumbledore pace around the cottage, casting spells at the threshold, then at the doors and windows.

"That spell on the door," Sirius said. "There's a language component to it, there must be a password..."

"Indeed," Dumbledore said, glancing back towards Harry. "If it is safe to try, your godson may be the key there."

"Harry? --Oh," Sirius said, a look of distaste on his face. "The snake. Is that some kind of signpost?"

"It's easier to speak Parseltongue when you've got a snake around," Harry said awkwardly. He had never before had occasion to explain how Parseltongue worked. "I mean, I've only ever done it that way, maybe it's necessary. I can't usually tell when I'm doing it, or hearing it, but I suppose the Gaunts could. In the memory Professor Dumbledore showed me of them, they used it as a private language in front of Bob Ogden."

"Right. And I suppose if you kill one and nail it to the door you've always got one available. I'm not _seeing_ anything that should go off if you talk to it and it doesn't like that."

"I concur," Dumbledore said calmly. "Harry, you know the language best. It should be safe to approach to about three feet in front of the door. Do not touch anything."

Harry hesitantly picked his way forward, feeling rather strongly that he did not actually want to be any closer to the building, let alone that snake. Up close, it was more pathetic than frightening. When he focused his eyes on the snake, he felt a faint echo of panic and pain and snake-minded horror, much as he had known that Draco's conjured snake second year had only wanted to escape, and the basilisk's mind had been twisted with hunger. The sudden, appalling intuition came that the snake had been nailed to the door still alive.

"That's _sick_ ," he said thoughtlessly.

"I am sorry?" Dumbledore said. Sirius made an inquiring noise, although his eyes were still on the door.

"Just - Parselmouths can - sort of see snakes' minds," Harry said. He had never put this into words before, but once he said so it seemed he had always known it. Snakes did not talk to each other out loud or in words, after all, and commanding them had been effortless for both him and Voldemort. "This one was still alive when they nailed to the door. When I focused it I got a - a glimpse of how it felt when it died." He shuddered. "It's been dead for, what, seventy years? It must have been stronger when they still lived here."

"A fine way to treat a symbol of ancestral dignity," Dumbledore remarked. Sirius made a revolted sound.

Harry took a deep breath and focused again on the snake, steeling himself this time against the rising tide of pain and death. He had always before known exactly what to say when confronted with a snake, and this time was no different--

" _Open_ ," he hissed, and the shattered door swung creakily a foot back. The movement was too much for the much abused, neglected hinges. The door came to the end of its swing, reflected back, and collapsed to the floor in pieces.

Harry jumped. All three of them had raised their wands by reflex at the noise, but as the dust settled, it became apparent that nothing else had happened.

After that things were more or less as boring as Dumbledore had suggested after all. Dumbledore and Sirius cast more detection spells through the open doorway. Then they led Harry through attempting them and seeing what responses felt like when there was something there. Both Dumbledore and Sirius agreed that the shack contained a powerful Dark object with a number of protections on it, and it seemed likely this was because Voldemort had hidden his Horcrux inside.

They would not, however, be going after it today. Dumbledore was going to return to Hogwarts and look into several of the more exotic protections first, and they would return with a fresh start, and more knowledge of what they were up against. Frustratingly, Dumbledore and Sirius both agreed there would be no time in the next few days, which meant it would probably be after Christmas and most likely the last week of break in January.

They walked back up the trail, traveling out of the Gaunt Apparition protections, before Dumbledore bid them goodbye and Disapparated back to the gates of Hogwarts. 

"Well, it's just about lunch time," Sirius said, glancing at his watch. "I arranged to take the whole day off, I wasn't sure how long it would be, and we're both in muggle dress. Want to go get lunch in London, Harry? Just the two of us?"

"Sure!" Harry said enthusiastically. He hadn't had much time with just Sirius yet over break, and he'd missed him over autumn term. Sirius Apparated them to a sheltered spot on Charing Cross Road, and they went for a walk to pick out an interesting looking restaurant. Harry, who was still somewhat frantically finishing up Christmas shopping, got Sirius to stop with him at a muggle bookstore to add a few things Hermione had mentioned wanting to her gift, and a couple of other shops for other people, before they settled on an Indian place and went in to get a seat.

While he was happy to spend time with Sirius, Harry had remembered something from his conversation with Dumbledore. "Sirius?" he said tentatively. "Were you listening to us talk when you were Padfoot, earlier?"

"A bit," Sirius said, putting his menu down. "Can I guess, you'd like to know why I didn't mention your family to you?"

Harry nodded.

"Honestly, up until I heard you talking I didn't realize you didn't know about any of them," Sirius said. "But to be fair, the only ones I'd met were Araminta and Dillena, and well, I met Araminta because she was a cousin and friend of my mother's. I'm sorry, it should have occurred to me when I realized how little you knew about James's family."

"It's alright," Harry said, relieved and still a little surprised to receive apologies easily. "Could I arrange to meet them? --At least, the ones who aren't... Evil," he finished, somewhat awkwardly, but Sirius laughed.

"Sure, I can write to Dillena and Geva - or you can, you're old enough, but I understand if you want me to do it first. I imagine they'll at least want to meet. I should write to Symon Weasley, too, he was at your christening and I'm sure he'll want to know you."

"Really?" Harry asked. "I thought Dumbledore said his wife wasn't that closely related to me?"

Sirius frowned. "Through the paternal line, yeah, but she was your grandmother's sister, so she was also your great-aunt."

"Wait, her sister?" Harry said. "Were my grandparents, um..."

Sirius looked amused, then slightly pitying. "First cousins, yeah, closer relations than mine. If it helps," he added at what must have been the look on Harry's face, "It wasn't an arrangement from birth like my family. 

“Euphemia Potter was divorced for infertility, she married... I can't remember which Mulciber, but one of that lot, decades before my generation. Montgomery Potter, your grandfather, married her so he'd have a lady of the House, after his first love died tragically young before the marriage could be finalized. He apparently didn't expect children of her, they'd planned to leave the House to his foster-daughter Githa Potter, whose parents had died when she was young. But she fell in love, married Gordon Bones, and died herself in that stupid duel the year my cousin Bellatrix was born, only a year after she had Amelia. James was somewhat of a surprise, their miracle child, they were both in their late fifties then."

"So Amelia's sort of like my cousin, too?" Harry said, trying to put this together.

"She _is_ your distant cousin, but yes, she's also the daughter of your grandparents' foster daughter, which makes her close to a first cousin," Sirius said. 

They spent the rest of lunch talking about holiday plans and Harry's term, with no new revelations. Harry felt the relief of a tension he hadn't been quite aware of. He hadn't yet been used to having Sirius, so he hadn't quite noticed missing him before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been looking forward to posting this one for months.
> 
> Hermione isn't speaking for me in the first scene here. _Northern Lights_ is the British/original title of _The Golden Compass_ for other Americans and was a recent release in 1995.
> 
> Hopefully juxtaposing it with the canon incident with Neville makes it clear why I made this backstory choice for his family. Frank and Alice were not the ones responsible for the other "accidents," either, although they were responsible for risking contact with their family - during a war that made living away from group protection extremely dangerous.
> 
> Liked this? [Reblog it on tumblr](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/640621299416416256/the-glass-fortress-chpt-20-branches-and-brambles), or come talk to me!


	22. The Book Signing

Harry and Hermione were both consumed by an anxiety they found it hard to hide on Thursday. Fortunately - if that was the word - they had an excuse; the Black family had been invited to a wedding Friday and Sirius had suggested that Harry should go, and Hermione if she was still considering adoption, so that they could get some practice with what he deprecatingly referred to as the pureblood politics and partying parade. While Harry had been to tea at the Boneses’ last spring, this would be a much larger, longer and more stressful occasion.

Hermione was evidently accustomed to thoroughly researching etiquette in advance. While Sirius and Andromeda, who had a better idea of what they might expect from muggle popular culture, had both assured them that the complicated rule books of etiquette were mostly a Victorian invention ("Meant to stop the frighteningly wealthy middle class from blending in too well," Andromeda remarked) there were enough significant differences to make avoiding embarrassing themselves a very real concern. Harry had not been that worried about this, thinking he had managed well enough before, and Hermione seemed to be handling the idea, until Sirius had asked Narcissa in front of them if the Nott family usually used forks at the dinner table, and Narcissa had blithely said that they did not.

" _Forks?_ " Hermione said, for once apparently caught off guard.

"Yeah, they weren't popular in Britain until a century or so after the Statute," Sirius said, "And anyway our etiquette had been changing away from muggles’ for centuries before that. A lot of people do use simplified muggle style place settings, but really traditional families or really traditional occasions expect you to eat mostly with your hands and wash them at the table, there are water bowls set out for it. Come on, I'll show you how it works so you get a chance to practice before we're actually at dinner Friday."

While they had been dragged dress robe shopping over the summer, they also had to endure brief fittings to be sure they would be tailored correctly after six months of growth. Through this process Hermione's anxiety grew and grew until Harry was almost relieved to leave for the bookstore - even if that was just as frightening in a different way.

Tonks met them out front, wearing her usual spiky pink hair today, and offered one arm to each of them. "You're not really supposed to Side Along two people at once," she said, "But I can manage it, just be careful when you get your licenses. Ready?"

Harry was grateful to be with Tonks when they actually reached the bookstore, and from her anxious expression he was sure Hermione was, too. The front looked mostly like any other bookstore, a dusty window crammed with books, but several of the covers or titles made him blush. Tonks strolled in, looking relaxed, and said hello to the girl at the counter, before stationing herself where she could see the door and finding a stand to browse, all of which gave Harry and Hermione some cover in her wake.

Harry and Hermione exchanged uncertain glances inside. Hermione said, "Er, is there a book group Thursdays?"

"Yeah, but you've mostly missed it," the girl said, looking up from the toll. "Meeting rooms are in the back, there are a couple of doors next to the toilets."

"Thank you," Hermione said, and went off in that direction, Harry at her heels. Tonks drifted slowly after them, arranging to browse where she could see most of the store at once. The book group was just breaking up. The door to one of the rooms had been propped open and people, mostly women, were streaming out in small clumps, chatting with each other or browsing books. There were still quite a few talking inside. Harry glanced at Hermione, uncertain if they should go in looking for Margaret. "Do we have an actual plan?" he muttered.

Hermione shrugged. "I mean," she said softly, "I was thinking we could go up to her and ask about the book at first - I did read it, and they _did_ say that people ask her to autograph things all the time--"

"Get it out, then," Harry said, feeling a rather sudden sense of deja vu for their second year, when they had needed a pass to the Restricted Section from Lockhart.

Hermione fumbled in her bag and took out the paperback Harry had found. They exchanged glances, but mutually concluded it was better to wait for Margaret to leave than intrude on the book club. Harry glanced over the shelves around them for a distraction, spotted _The Joy of Gay Sex_ , and hoped that his face was not too prominent in its resemblance to a tomato.

"Can you see if she's actually in there?" he asked Hermione. "I mean, she might've already left."

"Why are you asking me to look?" Hermione said.

"Because you're the one who looks like she might actually have wanted to go to the club," Harry said. He had no idea what book it was discussing, but it was obvious that nearly everyone he had seen leaving was a woman.

"Excuse me," a pleasant voice said a few feet behind them. The woman's accent might once have matched Sirius and Narcissa, except that years in working class London had softened it and ground down the distinctive features that said 'toff;' it was very like Andromeda's that way. "You two wouldn't attend Hogwarts, would you?"

Harry turned, suppressing the desire to go for the wand hidden in an inner pocket of his jacket, and met the gray eyes of Cassiopeia Black.

She was older than her portrait, but not by much. Though it had been painted forty years ago, she had aged only a handful of years if at all, and even the portrait appeared a good fifteen years younger than her age at that time. Meeting the real Cassiopeia it was immediately plain that the portrait _was_ a portrait. There was a mole above her right eye that the painter had left out, and they had changed the shape of her jaw and cheekbones so that her face did not seem quite as moon-shaped in the portrait as it really was. She looked very much like she had in the author photo, but that had been a small, grainy image, and this was Cassiopeia in life. Her hair hung in a thick braid down past her knees, but with her clothing it made her look like an aging muggle hippy. She was wearing a long flowery skirt and a faded T shirt that looked like it had once born an anti-nuclear proliferation slogan under her jacket. 

She looked, in short, the least like a Dark Lord of anyone Harry had met in his life.

He realized that they hadn't answered her, but Cassiopeia did not seem offended. Her lips quirked as she glanced over them, an expression the portrait made often. "Harry Potter, then?" she said lightly. "Pleased to make your acquaintance. And you would be?"

"Hermione Granger," Hermione said, eyes wide.

Cassiopeia went from amused to interested. "Did you co-author that article in _Arithmancy_ for next quarter? I hadn't realized you were still in school. A friend of mine had it sent to him for peer review and mentioned it to me in a letter, they're all either very excited or very offended."

"Er, yes, I did," Hermione said, and a few moments of what might as well have been Greek were exchanged between them.

Then Harry said, "Sorry, but - if you've got friends in publishing - it's just, Sirius thought you were dead. We all did."

"Ah," Cassiopeia said, softly, eyebrows arching. "That. Yes, I still publish under pseudonyms, and I have correspondents under them. But legally speaking, I _am_ dead in magical Britain. I haven't been back under my real face or name for thirty-five years."

There was a pause.

"Cass?" another woman called from the open doorway. Turning, Harry took a moment longer to recognize Margaret, who he had only seen in one photograph. She was an older woman, in her sixties or seventies - something about that seemed wrong, but he couldn't think exactly how old she should have been now - wearing denims and a coarse button down shirt. She had a mop of graying brown curls that she kept shoving out of her eyes as she came over. "I'm about ready to go if you're not busy - ah, who's this?"

Cassie went subtly alert, in a way that reminded Harry of how Andromeda had behaved when between Ted and Narcissa or Druella at first. It was not remotely comparable to anything he had observed about the portrait, who, after all, interacted with them from the other side of a canvas. "A couple of students from my old school," she said, lightly. "I think they've read your books. That would be how you found me?"

"Yeah," Harry said, now wondering if they should have put the book back and not mentioned it to anyone, but it was too late now. "And your portrait, actually--"

"Oh! I forgot about that thing," Cassiopeia said, starting to look more amused than alarmed again. "I suppose Sirius got it out from wherever Arcturus buried it - I'm surprised he didn't set it on fire, honestly, he'd certainly have liked to do it to me--"

"Ignore her," Margaret said firmly. "She has the worst sense of humor."

"I really think yours is just as bad," Cassiopeia remarked.

"It - she - told us about Margaret," Harry said, trying to stay on track long enough to explain. "And I recognized her name when Hermione and I were in a bookstore this week, and we found out Margaret was still publishing, so obviously she was alive, and signed books here. I'm sorry if we're - er - intruding."

"It was just - so horrible what we heard had happened to you," Hermione said, stumbling. "And when we found out you might be alive--"

Margaret winced, and looked very tired all of a sudden. Harry, seeing the reaction, had a horrible recollection that it was not only Cassiopeia and Margaret who had supposedly died in the fire. "Sorry," Harry said hastily, elbowing Hermione.

Cassiopeia's expression did not change; she only inclined her head. "I quite understand," she said. "Harry, if I may call you that-"

Harry nodded quickly.

"-I do read the papers, so I understand you would be living with Sirius, now?"

He nodded again. "Hermione's staying with us," he added.

"I see." Cassiopeia exchanged a look with Margaret. "Perhaps you had better come over for dinner."

"Er, we need to ask Tonks," Hermione said quickly. "-She's Andromeda's daughter, she's with us, they don't want us going out alone since..."

"Since my niece escaped prison, I assume," Cassiopeia said. "Well, then, where would she be?"

Tonks, who had met the portrait once or twice and knew very well who Cassiopeia Black is, stared when she was called over. Then she said, "And I was wondering which one of you was gay."

"I think I might be bisexual, actually," Hermione said, shooting an anxious look at Harry, who tried to smile in a way indicating this did not bother him and show no other reaction. He would have to figure out a way to break this to Ron so that his reaction upon finding out would not eliminate any chance he and Hermione would ever speak again. He probably would have handled it better if he had found out before they dated.

"And Evie owes me a Galleon," said Tonks cheerfully. "-My girlfriend," she added to Cassiopeia.

"That makes oh, a quarter or so of the family," Cassiopeia said, "And every one of them closeted - well, perhaps not now. Shall we find somewhere more private?"

Tonks apologetically vetoed going to Cassiopeia's house without checking with Sirius, so instead they all decamped to a nearby pub. Margaret was introduced to Tonks, and gazed at them in apparent curiosity, but she and Cassie exchanged a few quiet words at the entrance, and then she cheerfully went off to a different table a few away, waving over Tonks once she brought everyone’s orders back from the bar. Harry overheard a snatch of Margaret inquiring if being an Auror was like being a pig and if so why Tonks, who had the good taste to go around wearing those pins, had done it, before he stopped listening.

“So,” Cassiopeia said, slowly, examining them. There was an odd weight to her gaze and her words demanded unusual attention, something that made her seem a little more or less real than the people around them. It did not really remind him of Voldemort, or for that matter Dumbledore or any other powerful witch or wizard Harry had met, but it made it easier to believe that the woman in front of him had fantastic powers. “I’m right in thinking, I believe, that you two have interacted a fair bit with my portrait.”

“Yes,” Hermione said, looking a little flustered. “I’m sorry I said that earlier, I just – hadn’t thought how to--”

“’Mione, it’s okay,” Harry said, trying to stop her from digging herself deeper.

Cassiopeia gave the portrait’s familiar little half-smile. “I know. It’s alright. I can’t blame you for wanting to know how the tragedy ended. Our elder daughter, Clio, survived – she has children herself, now, they visit us on weekends sometimes – but Daphne, the younger, died in the fire. Arcturus hadn’t quite appreciated how muggle fire safety works when he set the fire.

“At the house, I tried very hard to convince my brother to kill me, thinking they were all dead, but what he actually did was remove me from the house in the shape of an animal so that I would vanish from the house’s magic without dying. He told Orion he had dumped my body in the Thames because it was inappropriate for me to join the family crypt after my shame, which did no favors for his relationship with anyone else in the family but kept them from searching for me. Does that cover the details you were wondering about?”

“Yes,” Harry said very firmly in case Hermione tried to ask anything else. He was regretting this more every moment. They sat in awkward silence for a time.

Then Cassiopeia drew a deep breath and said, “How is Sirius as Head, then?”

“Er, good, I think,” Harry said, although he still felt ill-equipped to answer this sort of question. “I don’t know how much you’d really get out of the papers...”

“Not that much, but the tabloids _have_ been implying about Sirius and Remus,” Hermione said; she added to Cassiopeia, “It’s true, Remus and Sirius are together. Narcissa keeps trying to talk Sirius into getting married but he says he doesn’t want to. Andromeda’s in charge of the Wizengamot seat – I mean you probably could have found out she was sitting as proxy – and she and Narcissa, and her husband Ted Tonks, and Druella, and Marius and Lydia and Remus, are helping Sirius figure out how to get the estate back in order. So if you’re wondering if it’s safe to talk to him, or come back, it is. Sirius and Remus are together _and_ he knows about Tonks and Evelyn.”

“I wasn’t, exactly, but I’m glad to hear it,” Cassiopeia said. “I suspect Marius has already asked you if you’re here willingly.”

“Yes. And I am,” Hermione said flatly. 

Cassie tilted her head to the side faintly, like an owl listening for prey, and said, “Please tell me they aren’t assigning the status of family tutor to a portrait. A copy of me forty years ago is bad enough without the total inability to directly use magic.”

“Sirius and Druella were helping,” Harry said, feeling slightly indignant, and confused about it. 

“Ah. But you spoke – or speak – to it enough to get attached to the idea of me,” Cassiopeia said.

“We do realize you’re a separate person,” Harry said.

“I know. It’s alright.” Cassiopeia raised one hand. “It’s rather a lot to take in at once and I wasn’t expecting it, but I know a little of what went on at your birth, Harry, and if I can offer you assistance with Riddle I’ll try to. It isn’t as if I have much to do, these days. Only... I ask that you not tell Sirius, or the others in the family, that I am alive.”

“Why?” Hermione asked, indignant, before Harry could get a word in. “I mean – Snape suggested you could stop Voldemort’s followers from doing – whatever they wanted – and you’re just hiding? And letting them, for _decades?_ ”

Harry had forgotten about that particular conversation. It had been nearly a year ago, but of course Hermione never forgot anything.

Cassiopeia’s smile was rather tired this time. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and rose. Harry wouldn’t have been that surprised if she’d left, but in fact she turned and went to the bar. Leaning against it was clear that she was rather short and slight, unlike the other Blacks he had met. She was a wispy, almost laughable figure, dressed in flowers and dwarfed by the solid oak. 

She did come back a few minutes later after all, with refills for their soft drinks and carrying whiskey, which she downed before going calmly back to the pint Tonks had brought for her. “A word of advice, since you’re both new to society,” she said to them. “Nearly every pureblood over sixteen is an alcoholic or halfway to it. It’s true that our livers regenerate in ways muggles’ don’t, but that is not the only reason not to drown yourself in it. Don’t try to keep up with your friends, and if you find yourself wanting to drink every day, there’s something else wrong with your life and you should fix it.” She shot a halfway longing glance back at the bar, the most expression Harry had yet seen on her face, then settled in her seat again. 

“You,” she said to Hermione, “Wanted to know why I’m hiding here, and not doing something about my successor.”

“Yes,” Hermione said, lifting her chin. “I do.”

Harry took another handful of chips instead of risking drawing their attention by commenting.

“There are a few parts to that answer,” Cassiopeia said. “I am sure you can guess the first is that being a Black made me completely miserable. I had a life with Margaret, my real life, and eventually being Cassiopeia Black, spinster aunt and Dark Lord, began to feel like a sort of demented nightmare I had to keep returning to. Yes, I have my research at home, but I didn’t have to deal with the _culture_ , especially not high society culture. Losing Daphne was – terrible – she was only eleven years old, and fire is a terrible death – but I won’t lie, a part of me was relieved that the attack I’d always been dreading had happened and I finally didn’t have to go back home and keep waiting for it.” Cassiopeia paused and took another drink of beer. 

“But what about everyone _else_ who couldn’t just leave?” Hermione said. “I mean, if you’d been prepared, couldn’t you have done something about your family, or politics, if you’re powerful enough to – to restrain Voldemort?”

“Unlikely, at that time. The world you enter is polarized, yes, but one side effect of the war is that blood purity has been thoroughly _dis_ credited among those who don’t directly support Voldemort. I pay a certain amount of attention to these things, you understand, through letters and publications, and I occasionally enter the magical world in disguise. You will have heard about muggle hunting, possibly as an historical phenomenon? The world in which my nieces were raised was one in which Andromeda was brought on her first muggle hunt when she was ten years old, because she loved to ride and she was an energetic child, and it seemed like a reasonable enough occupation for her to all concerned.” 

Harry blanched, and Hermione made a nauseated sound beside him.

Cassiopeia smiled thinly. “I tried, with Bella. She was my personal student, gifted in a way that rarely occurs, and I was allowed more influence over her. It helped, too, that she was the target of an absurd harassment campaign because she was Orion’s favorite, and I convinced him that it made sense to bring her into muggle London so she wouldn’t be terrified of crowds as an adult. I thought I was making progress with her, and you see how well that turned out. But the point I’m trying to make is that there are no more sly references to last night’s murder spree in the gossip pages, and from what I’ve heard those adults who still consider it a recreational hobby now have to go about it covertly and certainly don’t bring children. What Sirius can do, he can do because the world _has changed_. 

“Tom Riddle went in for blood purity _not_ because he believed in it at the time – I’ve no idea what he thinks now, understand, but I argued about it with him when he was starting out on that path and he was plain that he didn’t give a damn – but because it was the only possible means by which he could obtain a personal following. If I’d been interested in doing the same, certainly I could have taken advantage of my magical power to take over the Wizengamot – it would have been easier for me, with the name and the funding, and my family would have approved of that aim – but I trust I don’t have to explain why I did not consider that a desirable outcome. In many ways, Voldemort is irrelevant to the phenomenon that became the Death Eaters.

“The other part of that answer...” Cassiopeia hesitated, then said, her expression distant, “I want you to understand, whatever you do walking away, that I am a _terrible_ person.” 

Harry had absolutely no idea how to respond to this.

Fortunately, she didn’t seem to expect an answer. She paused only for a beat before going on, “I have taken lives I had no business taking. I have tortured for gratification of my own curiosity. I have played god knowing I was fallible, and I have judged those who committed no more harm – or considerably less – than myself. 

“I can say that I was raised that way, that I was taught it was my right and even a responsibility, and that I was shown by example that it was the only way to protect myself, and all of that is true, but it can’t possibly be a complete defense. It’s true of nearly anyone who commits crimes like that, I suspect. And I kept doing it well after I knew that muggles were people, well after I understood what was wrong with the idea of noble privilege, and if I tried to mitigate it, I don’t know if I can say that it matters. 

“There are times when I understand the appeal of religion – although I do not believe in God myself – because I can see what a comfort it would be to believe in the existence of some figure that could judge me, that was capable of looking at everything I have done and measuring what amends would be _enough_. But I know there isn’t, and to some extent that’s why I go on, because I believe that the people I have killed are gone forever, and taking myself out of the equation, seeing as I am done committing my crimes, would do nothing more than waste any potential I have for making up for it... And because I do still believe that, even if I became what my family always intended of me for a while, I am – can also be - more than that.

“But it’s easier to avoid if you aren’t constantly around people who expect that behavior of you. I learned that lesson bitterly with Orion. I couldn’t stop him from teaching the girls about human sacrifice, even if I’d come to believe it was wrong by the time they were born. And if I don’t want to be Cassiopeia Black, the best way of preventing sheer force of habit from dragging me back to it is to avoid people who would expect her – who would consider her behavior just and normal.”

"I understand that you can't fix everything," Hermione said, teeth together. "But you're going to do _nothing_ instead?"

Cassiopeia gave a tiny shrug. "I do what I can from my position. One of the areas I've spent a lot of effort researching is the use of magical medicine on muggles. Official texts will tell you that's a method of creative poisoning, but it isn't invariably true and it _is_ possible to investigate what's safe without actually pouring things down anyone's throat and seeing if they die. I have two editions of a book about it out, and I know it's saved lives. It also provides a counter argument to certain popular blood purist claims on the humanity of muggles. Similarly I was involved with the research on the heredity of magic in the eighties that disproved the claim that muggleborns tend to be weaker and less controlled. 

"Your face tells me you don't think that's enough, and it probably isn't, but what would you have me _do_ , Miss Hermione Granger? Go about kidnapping Death Eaters and executing them, just because I'm stronger than them? I don't have the right or the authority, the idea that I _should_ just because I _could_ is exactly the sort of nonsense that says we're all more human than muggles because of magic, and frankly, I politically oppose the death penalty - and the Dementor's Kiss - anyway."

Hermione let out a frustrated huff and took a sip of her drink, obviously trying to gear up for another argument. 

Harry hastily swallowed his mouthful of chips, and said, "But you _are_ willing to help me."

"If I can. I imagine you'll run into a lot of Riddle's magic if you're going to go about defeating him, and since I worked with him I know a fair amount of what he did, although the portrait had all of those memories too and may have already given you what is viable from them. I don't believe he's ever going to stop killing people, and insofar as he does nothing to prove me wrong there's not much point in opposing killing him. He's done things to himself that make him hard to imprison." Cassiopeia sighed.

"Dumbledore said that too," Harry said, leaping on something that might be useful. "But he wasn't specific. _What_ things?"

"Well, he said something to me implying he intended to make a Horcrux--"

"He did," Harry said. "More than one, we think."

"Lovely," Cassiopeia said tartly. "That was such an impressive brain before he had to go about destroying it. So that would be one. He also has a natural facility for possession and that may actually be more of a problem. Imprisoning his body is of relatively limited utility if he can leave it and take up residence in a prison guard's, or someone else outside the prison entirely, and use that body as he wishes, or use it to free his own. It's possible to seal a building against the movement of a wraith, but it probably isn't possible to keep it up indefinitely. Sooner or later you'll need to send someone in to do maintenance and that person is going to be vulnerable. 

"Sufficiently powerful magic users can often bypass or circumvent Apparition protections, either through making portkeys or directly. I can do it, and unfortunately I can confirm that I taught him how back when he was a promising yet idiotic teenager. You _can_ seal those holes if you know what you're up against, but it's chancy. I can think of six or eight methods that might be viable to keep him bottled for a few months, perhaps up to a year or two, but not for the rest of his life. Particularly when the rest of his life may well be eternity without outside intervention. The one really viable method of trapping him would probably be worse than execution and it would be hell to accomplish, anyway--"

"What is it?" Harry asked.

Cassiopeia smiled thinly. "You've been in Grimmauld Place? Did you see the crystal bottle of blood?"

"Yes," Hermione answered for them, looking apprehensive.

"That would be what remains of the body of the Dark Lord Vitalianus. Something like seven or eight hundred years ago he kidnapped a daughter of the Blacks, raped and murdered her. The head at the time, Lord Baron Draco Black, spent several years tracking him and his - singular - Horcrux down after devising a method of tormenting him, as he saw it, appropriately. 

"Draco Black was not content to simply destroy the Horcrux and kill him, you see. Instead he drained the man's blood into that jar, having enchanted it so that the wraith would be tied to its own blood and entrapped, and kept it on display with the Horcrux in the same cabinet. He remains there, and is, according to those family members who have investigated, conscious to this day. And yes, nearly every head since Draco Black's grandson has contemplated getting rid of but unfortunately we've got no idea what he actually did or _how_. We have his journals but he accurately predicted his descendants might be sick of the whole thing and burned those pages."

There was a pause.

"Your family is _mental_ ," said Harry.

"You are not the first to remark on it," Cassiopeia said. "But you see the problem. Even aside from the ethical issues and the necessity of reconstructing the methodology from the existing example, which no Black has ever managed, you'd have to restrain Riddle and keep him conscious while you conducted the damn rite and drained his blood, and since he's one of the most capable duelists in history and has substantial wandless powers that might be the worst part."

"Yeah. Sure," Harry said, and exchanged a baffled and horrified look with Hermione before saying, "So - I'm not saying I'm going to tell Sirius if you don't talk me out of it or anything, it's up to you. But why don't you want him to know?"

"Because I gave four decades to this godforsaken family and I don't want to give any more," Cassiopeia said. "If that's selfish I accept it. It certainly isn't more selfish than most of the things I did while I was sticking around. I don't really know Sirius - he was a year old when the attack happened - and I wish him luck, but I won't... We don't have a relationship. Narcissa and Andromeda, I knew as children, but not so well as Bella. Anyway, if he knew I was alive he'd feel obligated to reinstate me and treat me according to my position if he's a remotely decent Head and it's probably just as well if he can't. The tenants don't need to be terrorized more just when he's persuading them to trust he's different."

"Terrorized?" Harry asked before he could think better.

Cassie smiled thinly once more. "Oh, yes. I mentioned that I'd judged those I had no right to? Well, Arcturus Black experimented pretty openly on slave children, and - others he could access - and Orion thought of himself as a cut above him in ethics. The Honor Courts are allowed to sentence people to death, I don't know if you're aware, there's been a movement away from it in the last few decades but it was common in our generation and his. Orion wanted to avoid just arbitrarily murdering people, so he made the penalty for murder, or rape, forfeiting your life as a test subject. 

"Even at the time I knew it was _wrong_ to turn someone over to me or Arcturus for hitting someone too hard in a damn pub brawl, but I was raised to believe it was far worse to question the judgment of the Head of the House, and if it was going to happen anyway, it might as well benefit me. So, yes, I do believe the tenants will be happier believing I'm dead. I hear they still tell stories."

Harry had no idea what to say to this. Hermione, for once, seemed equally speechless.

"When you say test subject," Hermione said finally, looking nauseated, and stopped, apparently unable to complete the question.

Cassie smiled thinly. "If it brings you peace of mind, I didn't torture people for fun, I generally tried to keep them unconscious if it wouldn't negate the value of the information, and I truly don't believe I was crueler than - or, often, as cruel as - the methods of execution generally approved of by other Houses, a number of which still practiced living burial and burning at the stake for certain crimes when I vanished in 1960. This information tends to be restricted so I’m not sure what they do now,a side from announcements about the death penalty being abolished over the years. That much is _not_ true of Arcturus, or Orion or Cygnus, and it is a very cold comfort to me, but colder to the people I killed, I imagine."

Hermione nodded, looking faintly relieved. "I already knew about that," she confessed, and Harry nearly knocked his drink over. "I looked you up, in the library, and then some of your other publications, I have a general purpose pass to the Restricted section. I _did_ notice you'd stopped killing people, or at least stopped admitting to it, after a while, or I wouldn't have wanted to meet you," she said quickly.

"You couldn't have _mentioned_ that, 'Mione?" Harry said.

"Well, I wasn't sure what you would say, and we _did_ need to find out," Hermione said rapidly, and to Cassiopeia, "I'm glad to hear that you regret it. It's more than I was expecting to find out, honestly."

"Which articles did you read?" Cassiopeia asked.

"Er, the possession study," Hermione said. "And the one about wasteful sacrifice, where you demonstrated that a lot of class beta and gamma rites don't benefit from using a human instead of a goat or something. I talked about them with Sirius once I'd found them," she went on, looking slightly steadier, "And Andromeda, too, about how you were all - raised to think of it. Andromeda told me she helped with her first human sacrifice when she was _eight_. Otherwise I wouldn't have just - I mean, I don't think it was _right_ , but there's a difference between someone who was raised doing that sort of thing as a _child_ taking a while to stop, and Voldemort - Tom Riddle - being raised in a muggle orphanage and knowing perfectly well murdering people was wrong starting on his own."

"Well, I'm not entirely certain that's true," Cassiopeia said thoughtfully. "You remember he was sorted into Slytherin, and frankly all of the houses were rather more tolerant of that sort of thing at the time; and he didn't exactly get a lot of personal attention at the orphanage, and remember he was raised at the height of the Empire. Even you two are rather more inured to the concept of, oh, muggle hunting, or I imagine slavery, than muggle teenagers your age would be. And I bear some of the blame for Riddle’s idea of normal behavior myself, although he had already been conducting human sacrifice years before he wrote to me, I certainly didn't introduce him to it." She glanced at her watch. "I hate to say it, but I really need to get home soon, I have a potion on the burner that needs to be checked in the next twenty minutes. Do I have your word about Sirius?"

"We promise," Harry said, and Hermione nodded.

"I'll just go off and talk to - Tonks, was it? - about it, then. But first--" She took an ordinary spiral notepad out of her bag and wrote two phone numbers down on it in flowery, calligraphic script. "These are our numbers. Margaret likes to use the internet for hours on end, so we have two phone lines, if you're getting a busy signal hang up and try the other one. Owls addressed to Cassiopeia Black will not reach me, I have spell work up to ensure they're repelled as though I was dead, but if you address a letter to these two names, they'll find me,” she said, writing them in. "And Miss Granger, do write to me about that _Arithmancy_ paper when you have time, I'm very interested in your methods."

"Thanks," Hermione said slightly breathlessly, taking it. "Er - do you want the number for Sirius's house? He might recognize your voice from the portrait, but you could have Margaret call..."

"By all means, I might as well have it even if I don't use it," Cassiopeia said, so Hermione wrote down the number and "Black residence" in her neat, tiny script. 

Then they had to go home and pretend that nothing much had happened. Hermione, fortunately, thought to ask Tonks to take them back to the bookshop first, as the chances of her returning from one _without_ six or eight new purchases under normal circumstances were essentially nonexistent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My writing partner Tassledown originally came up with the Vitalianus backstory, although it hasn't been posted in anything yet afaik. 
> 
> While burning at the stake is most associated in popular culture with heresy and witchcraft trials in Catholic countries, it was a punishment used in Britain [particularly against women](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_women_in_England) for a variety of crimes, although in later times usually after hanging; this punishment was last used in 1789.
> 
> On a very different note, [more about the history of the fork. ](http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/design/2012/06/the_history_of_the_fork_when_we_started_using_forks_and_how_their_design_changed_over_time_.html)
> 
> Liked this? [Reblog it](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/641212911396831232/the-glass-fortress-chpt-21-the-book-signing) or come talk to me on tumblr!


	23. The House of Nott

Harry and Hermione had a confused, late night conversation about the meeting with Cassiopeia later that night, when they could be reasonably certain no one would accidentally walk in on them and hear the wrong few words. Hermione was much more upset than Harry about Cassiopeia's reluctance to get really involved. Harry kept thinking of how he would feel if, many years later, Dudley's teenage son or daughter came to ask him to help with something very important.

"It's not that I wouldn't want to," he said to Hermione, once he hit upon this metaphor. He was lying on his back on the floor in her bedroom, while Hermione sorted through the mountain of books and notes occupying most of her bed trying to decide what they should ask for Cassiopeia's assistance with, and occasionally retrieved items Crookshanks knocked onto the floor. "Of course I would. But I would want to see Dudley as little as I could, and if Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon were involved, I really wouldn't want them to know about it."

"But it's not like _Sirius_ hurt Cassiopeia," Hermione said, sounding frustrated. "The portrait likes him! And she knew Narcissa and Andromeda as little girls."

"But we don't know how she got along with Druella, or Marius, or Lucretia," Harry pointed out. "And do you _remember_ what the portrait told us about Sirius Black Sr. molesting her, and forcing her to marry him?" From the startled way Hermione cut off her next objection, Harry could tell she had not been thinking of that conversation. "Maybe she just doesn't want to talk to Sirius because his name reminds her of it, that's not her fault, _or_ Sirius's."

Hermione paused. If her next comment wasn't the agreement Harry had hoped for, at least it wasn't another argument, either. "Do you think the portrait told us about that to distract us from her not having a death date? Since we asked about the nameplate reading 'Lady Cassiopeia Black' and just '1910.'"

"Maybe," Harry said, frowning, then, "Hang on. Margaret's supposed to be the same age as her, isn't she? I think the portrait said they were both in their early twenties when they met."

"I think so," Hermione said. "I thought that was strange, too. I've read a little bit more about studying the Dark Arts, and apparently really powerful wizards and witches often age even slower naturally than most of us, and it's common for them to do stuff to actually prevent aging, so it's not that weird that Cassiopeia still looks maybe thirty-five or forty. But Margaret should be in her eighties. Do you think it's something Cassiopeia did? She told us she works on using magical medicine on muggles."

"You could write and ask when you send her the Arithmancy paper," Harry said.

Hermione made a little humming noise, then said, "Do you think she might be in contact with Marius?"

"It didn't sound like it," Harry said, startled. "Why?"

"Because, well - squibs sometimes have slower aging like us, I looked that up ages back, so it's not strange _he_ looks fairly young, but Annabelle's the same age as him, and she definitely doesn't look like she’s over seventy."

"Maybe," Harry said, slowly, thinking of Marius's conversation with them. "I mean, he definitely wouldn't have told Sirius about it, if he knew Cassiopeia was alive. Isn't she his sister?"

There was no immediate way to investigate this angle. After they had discussed their speculations for some time, Hermione changed the subject. "So, er, Harry - I found something last night," she said, sounding slightly shy, unusually for Hermione.

"What is it?" Harry asked, sitting up in a hurry. He wasn’t sure if he was more curious or worried.

"They were in my room," Hermione said. She had a stack of muggle composition notebooks in front of her, very battered. "These. I sort of wanted to look through them, and I wasn't sure if it would upset you if they were really..."

"What _are_ they?" Harry asked, increasingly mystified.

"They're your mother's," Hermione said, pushing her hair back, "And I'm pretty sure they're her project journal. Like what the portrait told us about last year."

Harry's breath caught. "Projects?" he said, rapidly moving towards them and hesitating, as though they might melt if he touched them. "You mean, research projects?" He could see the glimmer of spell work over them. "Did you figure out how to get into them?"

Hermione rocked back, looking both excited and nervous. She picked up the top book and hugging it to her chest. "There's a - a pass code and I guessed eventually - I should have gotten you last night when I did. I just - maybe that will explain to you why I..." She picked up the top notebook and said into it, clearly, "I'm a mudblood."

There was a discernible shift in the magic Harry had been half-aware of over the books; it clicked like a key fitting into a lock, and then seemed to dissipate harmlessly. Hermione extended the book to him. "That's sort of why I - I mean, I _know_ other muggleborns at school, there's Dean, for one, but no one like _me_. And I just wanted to - to know, I guess, to feel like..." Hermione swallowed. "It was like she was my friend, reading over the journals, like a secret friend who understood how it is. I'm sorry."

"I'm not angry. You could tell me sooner next time, but it's okay," Harry said. "Give me the first one?"

Hermione extended it over, and Harry opened the notebook slowly, carefully. "They're as much journals as notes," she said anxiously, "That one starts out like she'd meant to use it as a diary originally."

"Let me read, Hermione," Harry said He squinted at the faded pencil writing, the same as from the smaller number of notebooks from the box Snape had given him last year, and read:

_July 13th, 1978_

_Well, we're off, first night I'm not a student or staying with my parents._

_Sirius agreed I could stay in his place at least until I find work, which is nice of him especially since we all know that probably means until the Blood Status bill of 1974 is repealed, or until we lose the war and we all get carted off to Azkaban. I've been trying but he won't let me pay rent. It's not like he needs a flatmate, or the money, or like I could pay more than this month’s and maybe next, but I'd feel better. Mary's got a job waiting tables, but her parents' house is somewhere she can find work. Even if it is waitressing. That's the two of us: no bloodlines in the one world, no A levels in the other, no prospects._

_Sev tried to talk to me on the train back and it was making me mad not to be able to write about it, but if I wrote in you on the train someone would steal it and read it out loud, and if I wrote in you at home Tuney'd catch me..._

Here was his mother, and not in the form of school notes or half of a conversation scribbled in her textbook in class. Here, too, was something of what she had thought of Snape, after their break up, a time after which Snape himself had been able to tell Harry little.

The first entry was mostly about her family: rambling about Petunia's engagement and what her parents had thought of meeting Sirius, who she had told them was gay to avoid explaining bisexuality to them and so that they would believe he was not her boyfriend; and how mad she was at Sev and whether she would ever see him again now that they were no longer confined in the same school for ten months of the year. (She concluded, sadly, that she would, but he would probably be wearing a mask.) The faint pencil was tough to make out, and at the end of the entry he jerked his eyes up for a rest and saw with astonishment that it was nearly four in the morning.

"Merlin, we'd better get to bed," he said to Hermione, who made a vague, half-listening noise. "Hermione. It's four AM, we've got to go to that wedding tomorrow," he said, and got up to shake her shoulder so she would actually hear his next repetition.

Fortunately it turned out that traditional Wizarding weddings often started late, with the ceremony conducted at sunset and partying continuing into the early hours of the morning. Harry and Hermione were therefore allowed to sleep in. By the time Harry had finished a leisurely lunch in lieu of breakfast, Hermione was already anxiously quizzing Andromeda again about etiquette and the guests.

"--I mean, are you sure I should be going to a Nott wedding?" she said, anxiously wringing her hands. "I don't know if anyone will be awful--"

"They had better not be," Narcissa said, coming in the doorway. "Even if we haven't made any announcements about you yet you're a guest of Lord Black and he's been treating you as a family member. People _should_ be acting as though you're a fosterling of ours. If anyone snubs you to your face we'll call them out."

"I don't want you to _kill someone_ for insulting me!" Hermione said slightly hysterically.

"Duels over insults rarely come to that," Sirius said, sighing, "But Narcissa, _please_ refrain from killing anyone unless you've consulted with me, or they're actively attempting to kill someone, or going around in a Death Eater mask or - look, can I trust you to use common sense?"

"Common sense is hardly common," Andromeda said.

"Look who sayeth," Narcissa muttered, then said, "Yes, Sirius, I will keep in mind the ethical standards of the current Head of the House. But you know if we want them to respect her we need to willing to force it." Turning to face Hermione, she added, "Dueling isn't all machismo and stupidity. If you aren't willing to call people out for certain things it has a very real effect on your reputation and political power, not to mention your credit."

"I am trusting in your ability," Sirius said before Hermione could reply, "To defend the honor of the house _without_ unnecessary murders."

"Maybe I _shouldn't_ go," Hermione said anxiously.

Sirius turned to her, having warned off Narcissa. "The groom Damian Nott's grandmother, Iona Slughorn Nott, was killed in a Death Eater terrorist attack on Diagon Alley in 1973. Her husband stridently opposed Voldemort ever after, and while he remains somewhat of an apologist for blood purism in general, his son Talaus, Damian's father, is more firmly in the modernist camp. The respective sides of the Nott family are on extremely cold terms. I'm not going to say they're liberals, none of them has ever spoken to a muggle in their life or I'm very wrong, but they're not any worse than most of the pureblood circuit is. Some of the guests _will_ be Death Eaters, but by the same token some of the people you bump into at Flourish and Blotts or the Ministry Yule Ball are."

"Right," Hermione said, and looked slightly steadier. "So this is neutral ground, politically."

"As close as we often get," Sirius agreed. "Cheer up. You'll be fine," he said, and squeezed her shoulder. "Harry, anything you want to go over again?"

They got dressed and left in a group around three. Sunset was very early in December, which, Andromeda commented, made the season a favorite for weddings among those who wanted an excuse to party for sixteen hours straight. ("Don't worry, we don't have to stay that long," Draco said, having joined them just in time to see the look on Harry's face.) Harry was wearing green and gold robes that had been chosen more or less for him by Narcissa. Draco had on a soft violet color that Harry was still slightly surprised to see a boy wearing, and Hermione was wearing blue again, with a sort of embroidered cap over and between the hairstyle Andromeda had spent an hour helping her with.

"So it's the church, then dinner, then partying, just like Christian muggle weddings, right?" Hermione said, speaking mostly to Draco.

"I suppose, I wouldn't know," Draco said. "--Er, not just because of the muggle thing. I've never actually been to a wedding during Advent before, it's a fasting period like Lent for Catholics," he said this with the air of someone who had had to explain it repeatedly, "Which my family is. Traditional Christians like the Blacks - and Notts - don't fast, just do extra church days, though, so they hold weddings before Christmas as well as after."

"The schedule is more or less the same, yes," Narcissa said, interjecting herself neatly. "Sometimes a mixed wedding, or a modernist Catholic family, will hold a wedding anyway but curtail the festivities a bit during this period, but the Notts are traditionalists and the Parkinsons don't much care--"

"Which Parkinson is Damian marrying?" Draco asked, eyes opening wider, then "--I apologize for interrupting, Mother."

"It's alright, Draco, I told you before you don't need to be so formal at home anymore," Narcissa said, then added, "He's marrying Angelica, she would be Pansy's older sister, if you don't recall. They were hurrying to find someone, with Pansy engaged to be married and younger, and I understand her former classmate asked for her when he heard." There was a strange note in her tone before she went on, "It's time to Apparate. Draco, I'll take you, if Sirius and Andromeda can get Harry and Hermione...?"

Their party gathered and Disapparated in a series of pops like firecrackers. They appeared on the flagstones of an ancient looking stone church with ivy half-covering the walls and obscuring the stained windows. The church was on a shallow rise, and fields stretched away surrounding it, shading into moorland in the distance. In one direction an unpaved road, more of a wide path, led down the rise through a small village, which contained only a handful of buildings clustered together in the distance.

"The Nott family estate," Sirius said quietly. "They obtained land in Britain during the Danelaw and managed to keep it, they’re one of the oldest traceable families, like the Blacks. This is one of the main churches of their House. Quite a few of their dependents are dispersed elsewhere in Britain and Apparate or take other transit here for official matters. Come on, let's go in."

Other people in dress robes and occasionally gowns were Apparating onto the flagstone court and trailing into the church, though many were instead taking places lining the pathway up to the church. It had been explained earlier that the bride and groom would proceed to the church through the village, possibly on horseback. There were only a few seats in the church itself, chairs dragged in with the wedding decorations for the elderly and for visitors of rank. Sirius took Narcissa's arm as the acting Lady of House Black and went off to their designated spots with a wry face, while Remus, Andromeda and Ted led the three of them to find places to stand in the congregation.

They had arrived early enough that they would have to wait a while. Eyeing Hermione and Draco, Harry decided neither was going to want to talk. Draco had settled into a formal, aloof expression, while Hermione was gazing anxiously around her. Instead, Harry amused himself by looking at the people around him, who were wearing a variety of outlandish accessories in addition to brightly colored robes, and when he grew tired of this by examining the moving icons hung around the church and the pictures in the stained glass windows. While Harry did not know all that much about even muggle churches, he felt certain some of the images here would have startled an ordinary priest, such as the saint who was levitating his decapitated head above one hand and conducting his hovering halo in a slow revolution with his other.

At last Harry heard the noise of the crowd outside grow loud, and after a moment hoof beats. Shouts greeted whichever of the wedding parties had come close to the church, and twisting, Harry caught a glimpse of men dismounting from horses through the open doorway. He didn't know what Damian Nott looked like, but the groom was easily identified when they came inside. Harry knew Theodore Nott by sight, and of the other two young men present, one was even younger.

The remaining man, who must have been Damian Nott, was almost as skinny as Harry's classmate, but less rabbity looking, or perhaps only more confident. His hair was a lighter, coppery brown, just long enough to show that it curled. He was wearing dark blue robes with a bright silver sash, and carrying - Harry squinted - a sword in his hands.

People were talking all around them, evaluating Damian's expression and clothing and giving opinions on the marriage, so the noise was easily covered when Harry leaned towards Draco and whispered, "Is that a sword?"

"It's a Nott thing," Draco answered promptly. "Their family's Scandinavian or something, like Sirius said, and they have this tradition, I think there's a version of it used in magical Iceland today, too. They exchange the ancestral sword with one their bride gives them, and the woman's supposed to keep the one she gets for her firstborn son. But since basically nobody else does this they have to buy the woman's sword too, unless the other family's wealthy enough to get one commissioned themselves." Draco paused. "Theo talks about his family's traditions a _lot_ ," he added.

"That's interesting, though," Hermione whispered, "Are weddings usually really different between families?"

"Most pureblood Houses - the noble ones - will have their own customs, and have to come to arrangements with the bride's family if she's of equal rank," Draco said quietly, "Though people change them all the time and then complain about it - the older Blacks were supposed to be furious that Mother and Bellatrix both had Catholic weddings - shh, the bride's coming."

There seemed to be just one horse this time, but many people laughing and talking. The bridal party did not stop and dismount. Angelica Parkinson rode the horse, who was a sort of speckled gray color, straight through the doors of the church. Catching a glimpse of her face as she came closer, Harry thought she looked petrified. But there was no denying she was very pretty: her face was sort of solid, but didn't have the odd pug-like jaw of her little sister, and her hair was the same black, but fell in ringlets. She wasn't wearing white, but blue, lighter than the groom's robes, and embroidered with silver stars. On top of her hair sat a crown made of silver wire.

Damian came up and caught the horse's bridle lightly. He said something to Angelica Parkinson that made her smile, and the deadened look left her face. She was wearing a sword, too, on the other side of the horse. Harry watched her carefully draw it up, still in its sheath, and offer it to Damian. There was an awkward scramble to exchange them without either dropping to the floor then, and a few people laughed in the back of the church. Angelica blushed. 

Once the swords had been traded, she hung hers off the saddle, and Damian put the one he had received on his belt and reached to help her dismount. One of the women who had come in with Angelica took the horse's reins and led it back out through the church doors. Harry lost sight of them around the corner quickly.

The interesting part seemed to be over for the moment. Damian and Angelica went up to the front of the church with less fanfare than Harry would have expected and stood in front of the priest, who began to talk, and talk, and talk, droning on nearly as badly as Binns. Hermione was doing a much better job of pretending to pay attention than Harry, although since he saw other people whispering and exchanging looks throughout the church, he didn't think he was doing anything too disruptive. He looked through the people in the crowd, trying to see if there was anyone else he knew. 

Amelia Bones was sitting in the two front ranks of chairs a few places away from Sirius and Narcissa, but Harry didn't recognize anyone else up front. He tried to spot Susan in the crowd, but couldn't - either she hadn't come, or she was standing outside, or blocked by someone taller. He did eventually find Daphne and Asteria on the other side of the aisle, although Carya wasn't with them. Instead there was - Harry swallowed hard - a tall, veiled witch who must have been their mother, Ulrike Selwyn, who had tried to kidnap him last month.

At least there was nothing obviously wrong with Asteria.

Suddenly there was a clatter around him, and Harry belatedly went to kneel alongside the congregation. He had completely lost track of what was going on, but tried to stand and move with the others so it wasn’t too obvious. There was a song that most of the church seemed to know by heart. Harry was somewhat grateful to be standing with Hermione and Ted, who clearly did not. It seemed that the wedding also included a church service. Harry had a moment to wish the Dursleys had ever bothered to go, as he might have been somewhat less lost if he had anything to go by except for vague mental images cribbed from movies he hadn't been allowed to watch directly.

Eventually the attention was back on Angelica and Damian. Harry listened for the vows, but didn't hear any, only blessings, although there was an oddly tense moment when the priest asked the assembly if anyone knew any reason which would impede a lawful marriage between the couple. Damian and Angelica did exchange rings, and drink one at a time from a cup of wine, so Harry supposed that if either of them had wanted to refuse they could have. Then their hands were being tied together with shining silver and blue ribbons, and the priest drew his wand from one of his enveloping sleeves and placed it on them, declaring them united in holy matrimony.

"The real marriage spell work was done earlier," Draco muttered, sotto voice, to Harry and Hermione. "Noble Houses _always_ use illegal spells for it."

Harry resolved to ask what Draco was talking about later.

There was another awkward moment after the next song where the priest asked everyone to offer the greeting of peace to each other. Andromeda, fortunately, turned to them both first and demonstrated by saying, "Peace be with you," and kissing Hermione's cheek, then shaking Harry's hand. Harry turned and echoed these words to a small girl with silvery blond hair who looked a year or two too young for Hogwarts behind him, then her amused-looking mother or older sister, who was wearing a violently turquoise cloak.

In the clatter as people began to get up and go to the front for communion, someone slid into the place by his right and said, "Draco, Harry, Hermione!" 

Harry turned and found, to his surprise, Daphne. She did not seem worried, or alarmed. Instead she was grinning delightedly. She was wearing a deep green gown with a loose veil of the same color pinned to the top of her hair, which was arranged in a complicated style with four braids hanging down in ribbons, and more on top of her head. 

"Daphne," Draco said, quirking an eyebrow. "Is something wrong?"

"Stop looking at me like you're too proper for us peons," Daphne said. "We're going to unrig the bridal chase, Pansy got me in on it at school and we're finding all the kids we think we'll help."

"Unrig?" Harry asked.

"Yeah, it's something they do at Nott House weddings. The tenants too, not just the noble family. The bride and the groom race to the hall from the church and whoever loses has to serve the other one, and it’s supposed to be an omen of the rest of the marriage. A lot of the time they only give the groom a horse, or they give him the faster one. Angelica doesn't really ride well, so they just gave her the tamest, gentlest horse in the stable. So we're going to trap the road and stall Damian. Come on, while everyone's busy, they won't see us leave," Daphne said. Her face was a little flushed, and she was beaming, totally at odds with her usual stiff face in public.

Harry glanced at Andromeda, uncertain if he should really be going off with a bunch of pureblood teenagers, but she was smiling herself with a distinctly nostalgic air. "Go on, all three of you, causing trouble is the main redeeming feature of having to go to other people's weddings," she said. "I'll tell Sirius when he's back."

The four of them slipped out a side entrance of the church, joining a small, but growing huddle of teenagers and children, more female than male but not entirely. Pansy Parkinson was there, and she turned incredulous eyes on the three of them, but rapidly went over to confer with Draco in whispers.

"Come on," said an older girl Harry didn't recognize. "We're hobbling the groom's party's horses first, and hiding the tack - any of you know how to handle horses? Anyone good at conjuring rope/?"

Hermione volunteered for the last, hand shaking slightly as she stretched it out, but after this claim was demonstrated she was rapidly commandeered. Harry found himself volunteering to hide the tack, and very shortly, climbing the ivy-covered wall of the church in order to stow the groom's gilded saddle up the roof of a nave. The giggling of the girls below him seemed very loud, and he wondered that no one came out to check. But just then the congregation's noise swelled in song again, covering it completely.

"What about the road, is it blocked?" Draco was asking.

"The tenants put up some stuff in the path earlier, we always do it for weddings," said a girl in faded checkered robes with a patch on the skirt. "We made sure Angelica's handmaidens tipped her off to use the shortcut. We're going to make _sure_ Damian spends his first evening as a married man pouring mead for his bride," she said, to mad giggling from most of the girls present.

"And the night on his knees," called another girl, to shrieks of laughter.

"Quiet, there are children present," said the first girl, laughing. "Okay, we've got the horses hobbled, let's go make sure the grooms can't sabotage Angelica's."

In fact they scared off Theodore Nott with a couple of boys in the process of tying a hobble around the legs of the gray horse Angelica had rode in on, now placidly cropping scanty winter grass by the church entrance. It seemed liable to turn into a stand off, with the girls' party gathering objects to throw. Harry, thinking that this was liable to actually get someone hurt - or the horse - slipped his wand out of his sleeve, and aiming carefully, whispered, " _Expelliarmus_!"

Theodore Nott's wand shot out of his pocket and into the air. He cried out, turning, but Harry had darted forward to catch it - and, thinking that if he led them away the others would have time to sort out Angelica's horse, he took off at a run around the church.

No sooner did he clear the first turn, all three of the grooms' party running after him, did it occur to him that this had been very stupid. He doubted either of them had really recognized him yet. Sunset had passed into early dusk, and the cold moor was increasingly dark, and he was only one teenager among many. But if they caught up they would realize who he was rapidly, and no one else had followed him into the chase. And Harry might well have escalated matters pointlessly by stealing Nott's wand.

Then again they only needed a few minutes - he'd just have to make sure the wand got back to Nott without getting close--

Harry remembered the nave he had climbed to stow the saddle. He glanced over his shoulder, panting, and made sure that Nott was still fifteen or twenty feet back. Then he held up the wand, hollered, "Catch," and hurtled it in the opposite direction. Nott spun, obviously trying to track the wand with his eyes, and Harry went up the wall as fast as he could. He didn't stop at the nave this time, but kept climbing up to the peak of the church. He heard an enraged shout after him, but he didn't dare look back.

Then he was up to the top of the peak and rolling over it to descend to the other side, out of sight of those chasing him, although everyone outside the church entrance would see. Well, there was little help for that now. He descended as rapidly as he could. At one point his foot slipped and he slammed down against the tiles, winded and grabbing frantically for purchase. He slid too far for comfort before he caught a strong branch of ivy and managed to break his momentum, then descend, carefully, to the outcropping over the entrance, from which he could drop from his hands.

Applause greeted him. Blushing furiously, Harry turned, and found that the girls' party had been joined by many of the onlookers.

"We got the horse sorted, they're coming now," said the girl in checkered robes, running up to help him up from the ground where he had landed. "That was great - what's your name?"

"Er, Harry Potter," Harry said, and rapidly broke away from her stammering to rejoin Hermione, Draco and Daphne.

"You idiot, Potter," Draco greeted him, but for once he was grinning, too.

With Angelica's party firmly victorious in the game of sabotage, the race fell out more or less as it had planned. Damian and his groomsmen had to go and find their horses and get them unhobbled, then help Damian mount bareback and bridle-less in his dress robes and start down the path, cantering to make up for already-lost time. Meanwhile, Angelica had been helped up deftly to the saddle by two of the older girls, and taken off at a trot at a right angle to the path, confidently navigating the dusky hillside.

Everyone else trooped down the path the long way at a walk. They didn't catch up to either horseback party, but saw signs of the obstacles erected for Damian on the way; hurdles to jump, improvised gates that had been opened, and similar. When they reached the hall, down in the village, they found Angelica blocking the way in with her sword, something greeted with mad shrieks of laughter; "It's supposed to be the groom who does that," the girl in checkers explained to everyone, muffling her own giggling and looking well away from Harry.

Harry was slightly embarrassed when Hermione, sighing, reached over to pick ivy leaves out of his hair and collar, but on the whole he was grateful for the interlude. It had made the whole thing seem much more like an ordinary party, one that might even be kind of fun, and less like a stilted performance for the benefit of politicians. They trooped into the hall, which was laid out with long tables like the Great Hall in Hogwarts along with one high table raised above the others, where the bride and groom would sit. A fireplace burned at both ends. Sirius, again, was with the other ranking guests, but the adolescents were free to sit more or less where they wanted, and most of the younger guests gathered together at one table away from the adults. Looking up at the high table, Harry saw that amidst a great deal of laughter and what looked like taunting, Damian was indeed on his feet, pouring drinks for his new wife. 

Harry had not needed the warning Sirius passed him and Hermione quietly not to drink much in this company. But many of the other teenagers were not so inhibited, and the alcohol - wine, whiskey, and a honey-flavored drink that must have been mead - was passed as freely down their table as the adults'. Hermione's anxiety about table manners had obviously been misplaced. While it was helpful to know what the small bowls of water and soap were for, and which dishes he was supposed to use a spoon for and which he was supposed to eat with his hands, his knife or a piece of bread as a sort of all-purpose utensil, no one was really paying attention. Harry felt certain any serious gaffes would be covered by the several boys on the end singing loudly and terribly in a way that suggested that they had started drinking on the way to the wedding.

Food appeared on the tables just as it did at Hogwarts, presumably, Harry supposed, due to the same work of elves in the kitchens, wherever they were. There was a lot of it, much less familiar than the cooking at Hogwarts. In particular the Nott kitchens seemed to have different ideas about which flavors went together. The sweet sauce on meat wasn't bad, but Harry took one bite of something that turned out to be fish smothered in wine, vinegar and cinnamon and decided that it was an experiment he could live without continuing. 

Meanwhile, Hermione was trying to sample everything in sight unobtrusively, curiosity apparently overruling concern about the Nott kitchen servants, and chatting with several other girls around their age about some historical event Harry couldn't follow. Harry thought one of the girls was a Slytherin a year younger than them, but didn't recognize the other two. Draco had moved halfway down the table and was conferring with Pansy quietly under the cover of the general chaos in the dining room. Skimming, Harry spotted Lucius Malfoy finally several tables away and clearly distracted by glaring at Narcissa. He had not merited a place with the more exalted guests himself, even if he was engaged to the bride's younger sister.

Harry was debating trying to find someone else he knew when Daphne swung over the bench to the empty place next to him. "Hi, Harry!" she said, giggling, cheeks flushed. It was immediately obvious she had drank rather a lot with the first few courses. She had also lost her veil, or taken it off when she left the church. "I'm glad I got a chance to see you over break. I can't believe you climbed the church!"

"If I'd been thinking about it I probably wouldn't have," Harry admitted. "But once I'd started running with his wand I obviously had to stop him catching me to get it back--"

"Obviously!" Daphne giggled and kissed his cheek. "Mum looked so pinched when she heard - because she approves, mind, if it was anyone else she'd be laughing with everyone else."

Harry hesitated, but said quietly, "She's not angry, then? Asteria's alright?"

"Yes. I was _petrified_ when she met us at the train, but she only said about half a sentence about Aster inheriting timing from the wrong parent and let it go. Either she believes it was an accident or she's willing to pretend she does."

"And you talking to me won't, er, be a problem for that?" Harry asked, uncertain if she had remembered this concern in her current state.

Daphne shrugged. "Maybe it will, maybe it won't, but honestly, as long as we're safe I don't care if it's a bit awkward at home. I don't want.." She stopped and looked down at her skirt, seeming suddenly much more clear-headed, and touched the weave. 

"You know," she said in a strange, distant tone, "This is the first new party gown I've had in my _life_. I've had some nice ones, but always cut down from Mum's old things, or Myrina and Carya's. You know why?"

"Why?" Harry asked, although he remembered the conversation about her school things and could guess.

"Because of the Dark - because of _Voldemort_ ," Daphne said angrily. "I mean, it's actually Bellatrix footing the bills, but everyone will see it as his support. And I can say that because just like you know it, everyone else knows it too. I'm a walking _advertisement_ \- see how he'll take care of his soldiers' widows, see how the Ministry reduced a virtuous woman to this state?" She gestured irritably with her wine cup, making it slop alarmingly. "I mean, Mum's not thinking of it that way, she just wants me to be happy so she buys me things, but everyone else will, and I'm _not_ having it. The best way I could think of to make trouble was to come over and talk to you. And maybe dance. Cho's not here tonight, she had another party, so you'll dance with me to open, won't you? She knows I'm harmless and Sapphic."

"Er," Harry said, blushing, but he could hardly refuse an invitation put to him in these terms. "Sure. Is there going to be dancing?"

"Soon, I think, this is the sweet course--" Harry turned and indeed saw that the last dishes had faded and been replaced. "They'll clear the tables to sit around the edges soon and then start, so we should grab dessert while we can, the rest of the food gets distributed outside - mostly for the Nott tenants - and it's a pain to go chase the baskets down later. Anyway," Daphne continued, "We were talking about marriage because of my age, and I mentioned I thought I'd like children and I needed someone who wouldn't take offense to Tracey - I was right, she guessed we were together - and she started talking about who she might write to about it. So I think she's at least worked out I _don't_ want to take the mark without exploding on me or anything." She paused. "There, they're floating the tables away!"

Harry snatched up several slices of spiced cake and his cup and got up to get out of the way, passing one slice to Hermione, who he had noticed had been totally oblivious to the last course changing in the midst of her conversation. They clustered, eating the sweets they had snatched up from the tables before they vanished, as musicians gathered on the raised platform where the head table had sat. Harry started to apologize to Hermione for abandoning her when they had finished and the first song was beginning, but Daphne said, "No, don't - you can dance with both of us--" and before Harry could protest that he had absolutely no idea how that was supposed to work, she had grabbed both of their wrists and dragged them out on the floor.

"Now you take his other hand," Daphne said to Hermione, who gave a somewhat anxious grin to them both but obeyed. Actually, observing the other dancers, it didn't seem too bad. There were quite a few couples who were only turning in circles in varying speeds, or swaying while holding hands loosely, although some others were doing quite wild acrobatics. Harry spotted another man in between two women who was spinning them one at a time under his arms, but he wasn't sure that Hermione, usually fairly stiff when it came to athletic activity, and Daphne, obviously tipsy, were the best to try it with. Instead they turned loosely in a circle of joined hands the way a few other small groups were, and then Daphne tried to show them something with footwork that she wasn't quite capable of keeping straight herself until the song ended and Harry and Hermione could get away with retreating.

Daphne stayed on the floor alone, slowly turning with her arms held loosely out like a ballet dancer's, and rapidly acquired a circle of admirers. Harry could see what she had meant about being a walking advertisement. He knew Daphne had no interest in him, or any of the boys, but her chestnut braids gleamed in the firelight and the embroidery on her skirts glinted gold. She was beautiful, and happy, and it would have been easy to want her, and to want what she represented. He didn't know the people around them well enough to say if dancing with him had influenced the boys who were grouped around her, except that Theodore Nott was not among them.

Harry and Hermione hovered at the edge of the dance floor for most of the night. The music was nice, even if Harry didn't really see the appeal of dancing without Cho to egg him on. They watched the dancers and identified classmates among them; Susan danced with a large number of people, boys and girls, and Hannah and Draco danced together several times, collecting a certain number of stares and whispers from adults at the sidelines. Harry also spotted Blaise Zabini and Ernie Macmillan with a succession of girls he did not know. Periodically there were circle dances, where everyone came up, or all of the girls or the boys, and danced together. Hermione went up for several of those, but Harry bowed out. It was easy enough to find people to talk to at least about the wedding and the chase at first, although as the evening went on increasingly more of them were drunk enough to be awkward to make conversation with.

Around midnight Harry went around the hall, looking for Sirius, and found him in a corner by one of the hearths, talking to a tiny elderly witch who seemed to be a bit deaf. "--Yes, some really good people supposed to start next term!" he was shouting, then spotted Harry. "Madam Marchbanks, let me introduce you to my godson, Harry Potter--?"

Madam Marchbanks was mercifully unimpressed and gave only the customary greetings before stomping away, saying she wanted another cup of wine if the Notts were going to keep them all here all night. Gratefully, Harry sank into her abandoned chair.

"Boring to be sober, isn't it?" Sirius said, leaning over to ruffle his hair. "I can't believe I am by now, but with everyone trying to kill us it doesn't seem wise." He cast a brief, longing look towards the drinks, then shook his head. "How's the night going?"

"It was nice to see everyone," Harry said tactfully, and suppressed the desire to ask if they could go home soon.

Sirius seemed to see it in his face and laughed. "There's Floo powder by the hearths, you can go whenever you like. Just let me know first so I know you haven't been kidnapped," he said. "Tell Hermione if you see her. I saw you dancing with Daphne Greengrass _and_ Hermione earlier," he added teasingly. "Should Cho worry?"

Harry flushed. "Daphne's _gay_ , she's dating one of our classmates," he said. "And she dragged Hermione out with us."

"Hah, so it's her girlfriend who ought to be worried about Hermione, then?" Sirius said teasingly. 

"I'm going home now," Harry said firmly, and reached for the bowl Sirius had pointed out on the mantle. Sirius's laughter followed him into the flames.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Liked this? [Reblog it on tumblr](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/641872294176849920/the-glass-fortress-chpt-22-the-house-of-nott), or come talk to me!


	24. Christmas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Several Christmas presents are taken from OotP.

Harry was not the first one home from the wedding. Remus had apparently retired an hour or so earlier, and greeted Harry pleasantly from the sitting room when he arrived in the fireplace at Sirius's house. Harry went up to bed not much time later, feeling exhausted. He half-woke several times through the night, hearing people trooping up and down the stairs and laughing loudly.

Harry was the first one awake in the morning. He went to get breakfast started, feeling an odd sort of cheeriness at the silent house and the idea of having food ready when anyone else woke up. Remus was the next down, an hour or so later Hermione trailed down half an hour later, and Sirius wasn't up until nearly noon. "I stayed until dawn," Sirius said, yawning, "It's sort of expected when you're a notable guest, at least unless you've got a good excuse... Is that lunch? Harry, you're a miracle worker."

Harry tried not to beam too much at this praise.

Sirius was just sitting down to eat when they heard someone coming through the Floo in the living room. A moment later, Narcissa, sounding distinctly haggard in comparison to her usual voice, called, "Good morning," and clattered into the room. It was immediately obvious she had been out all night, as opposed to coming from Grimmauld Place. She was wearing the same bright blue robes with silver specks as to the wedding, although the veil she had worn in the church was draped haphazardly over one shoulder and bunched up with her cloak. She had taken down her hair at some point and rebraided it neatly but simply down her back, and her face was freshly washed and lacked makeup.

"Hah, morning," Sirius said, raising his tea cup to her. "Had a good night, Cissy?"

"Educational," Narcissa said, coming in through the doorway. "Is there coffee?"

"On the counter," Remus said, waving a hand. "The kids don't have a taste for it, but I made some, there should be another cup."

"My savior," Narcissa said, and - to Harry and Hermione's muffled laughter - swept over and kissed Remus's hand before going to pour it.

"So who was it this time?" Sirius asked, leaning back in his chair and reaching for the _Prophet_ Harry and Hermione had discarded earlier. "I assume if it was 'educational' you're going to tell me."

"That part was earlier," Narcissa said, doctoring her coffee heavily with cream and then sitting down in the empty chair. "I finally had a chance to corner Ezra Parkinson in person and find out why he's not opening my letters about Pansy. I didn't think he was this sadistic and he's not. Lucius is blackmailing him."

" _Blackmailing_?" Hermione said.

"Oho," Sirius said, while Remus gave a soft whistle. "With what?" Sirius asked.

"Exactly what you'd expect," Narcissa said, and rolled her eyes. "And he told me he seriously considered confessing and taking the prison sentence - Lucius can't pin any murders on him, mostly taking the mark and service, so he wouldn't necessarily get life - but... How much do you remember about the Parkinson family politics?"

"I know Cyrus is an utter creep," Sirius said, then added to Harry and Hermione, "He's the family Head. He offered me almost every unmarried girl in the family over the summer when he managed to corner me. Including a couple of girls under ten."

"What, to marry _now_?" Hermione asked, looking horrified.

"He was quite plain that whenever I liked would be acceptable," Sirius said. "So I can see why Ezra would be concerned about Cyrus having custody over his remaining daughters, but with Angelica married that's only Pansy, isn't it?"

"Only Pansy of _his_ children, but Ezra's dependents include his older sister, Christina Parkinson, who divorced for desertion Constantine Burke--"

Sirius made a soft noise of comprehension.

Narcissa, nodding, said, "And all of Christina's children who are yet dependent, which includes two young adult women in their early twenties, a teenage daughter the year below you two and Draco, and a son who just graduated. There’s also Ezra and Christina’s grandmother, whose natal family is the Boneses and probably would not take her back after her political affiliations during the last war. Granted, Cyrus can't marry Christina's girls off without Gerard Burke's approval, and Gerard actually does look at women as people and not talking broodmares, not to mention that Gerard’s one of our tenants and we could theoretically block his children’s marriages." She hesitated. "I suggested _you_ might be able to help settle Christina elsewhere."

Sirius frowned slowly. "I'm not opposed to it, but what exactly are Christina's politics?"

"As far as I know she has none." Narcissa shrugged. "She was pulled from school during her N.E.W.T. classwork to marry. I knew her then but it was before the war. She lived with a violent and erratic man for years until he fled the country to escape his gambling debts and left her dependent on her brothers, at least two of which were Death Eaters - the youngest is in prison, Jeffrey Parkinson, he was one of Bella's training commanders. I don't know what Christina thinks, herself. _She_ may not know. But if you provide for her, and Ezra can find somebody else to take Pansy on, he _will_ tell Lucius to publish and be damned and most likely end up in jail, which is rather a win from your perspective anyway."

Sirius hesitated, then said, "In order to take Christina on permanently I would need permission of - let me think - the Parkinsons are bound to the Longbottoms. I'll have to talk to them, and Christina herself. We can look into it. I'll need to find something for all of the children?"

"The eldest daughter took one of the Teaching Assistant jobs just opened at Hogwarts - Gerard Burke allowed it - and the eldest son, who I didn't mention, is already employed at the Ministry. They could provide some support for their siblings. But the second adult daughter, the recent graduate and the teenage girl are all unemployed and unengaged, yes. Christina doesn’t have a lot of formal qualifications, but I assume we can find something for her, we have so much lying unused. Remus, can you set up the meetings...?"

"I'll make a note later," Remus said. 

"So was it Ezra you spent the night with?" Sirius asked.

Narcissa shook her head and hesitated; then with an expression like someone jumping all at once into icy water, she said, "I slept with Ulrike."

There was a pause.

" _Ulrike_?" Sirius said.  
"You mean the one who tried to kidnap me? Daphne's mother?" Harry asked, although he was too baffled to be angry, exactly.

"I hoped I could talk to her given a chance in private," Narcissa said, then, "--We were seeing each other in school, before we both got married. She was unwilling to be faithless to Pandion while he lived - they eventually came to love each other deeply - and then Lucius..." She shook her head.

Remus had his eyebrows raised skeptically, but Sirius was staring at his cousin with something approaching pity. "Didn't go well?" he said. "She would have read Skeeter's article, wouldn't she?"

Harry was startled by the reminder. Narcissa was so obviously at home in society that it was difficult to remember she had recently been outed as somewhere between a halfblood and a muggleborn herself.

Narcissa smiled tautly. "Well, she actually did assure me she still feels I am her equal. There were and are other halfblood Death Eaters, you will recall. I told her I’d met my muggle mother and she didn’t argue with me, exactly. She has no experience of muggles whatsoever. She only believes that her personal opinions and convictions are irrelevant in the face of her vows of loyalty--"

"As though Voldemort ever kept a promise he didn't feel like honoring," Sirius said, snorting.

"Yes, I said that, and she agreed, actually. The trouble is that she feels she owes her loyalty to Bellatrix," Narcissa said, and downed the rest of her coffee. "Anyway, Harry, Hermione, her working theory about that display is that her daughter - who she knows and hardly minds is a lesbian - has a crush on _you_ , Hermione, and was trying to cover for it by dragging Harry over, everyone being aware that you two are nearly attached at the hip."

"Is Daphne _all right_?" Harry asked, alarmed.

Narcissa shrugged. "If she thought something was actually going on between them I'm not sure what she'd do. But her daughter identified some halfblood girl in Slytherin as her actual girlfriend and Ulrike, knowing her daughter, disbelieves Daphne would betray her lover. I gather she's already reconciled herself to that attachment and that might be why she's untroubled by my real bloodlines. She assumes this sudden sympathy for muggleborns is behind Daphne's new aversion to taking the mark couched behind a desire for marriage, but she wants Daphne to take her time and make up her _own_ mind rather than forcing her. 

"I pointed out that she'd said herself she thought the Dark Lord was unstable and perhaps Daphne would be happier unmarked, and she changed the subject. I doubt Daphne will be forced to decide for some time. For one thing as a girl from an impoverished family she's of limited political use, and children the Dark Lord wants primarily for their magical skill as soldiers have to be cultivated more carefully. Please do tell her I said all of this, but it had better wait until you're back at school or see her in person otherwise, lest Ulrike get a glimpse of the letter."

The adults went off after eating to deal with work, including the issue of Christina Parkinson and her children. Harry hoped for Draco's sake as well as Pansy's that they would be able to arrange something. He knew perfectly well the sort of thing Ezra Parkinson must have done if he was a Death Eater, but he felt a new, grudging respect for the man's willingness to go to prison to defend his daughter from Lucius Malfoy's blackmail - assuming any of it was actually true.

The next day was Christmas Eve. Sirius gave them the slightly alarming news that the Black House Christmas feast would be taking place from afternoon to evening the next day and they were encouraged, but not required, to attend. He softened this by telling them that since this was the party they were obligated to host for all of their dependents, and all of the other noble families would be doing the same thing, the Black adults would be the only really high ranked people in the room and it would be significantly more casual than the wedding. (And, Harry reminded himself, the wedding itself had not exactly been formal by his own, Dursley-influenced standards.)

They spent Christmas Eve day largely unoccupied, playing board games and going outside to build a snow fortress in the back garden. In the evening, instead of going over to the Tonkses again, or having family dinner at Grimmauld Place or something, they went through the Floo to Amelia Bones's office in the Ministry. Here the werewolf Amelia had saved the life of by seizing her as "evidence" was forced to spend Christmas, being under what was essentially house arrest in Amelia's office.

"Thought we'd have a bit of an improvised party," Amelia said upon greeting them. She was carrying a large picnic hamper under one arm, and unfastening her cloak with her other hand, having just arrived herself. "I appreciate you coming. She's having an awful enough year without having to spend the night playing cards with whoever volunteers to sit with her while I go home."

Harry vaguely recalled Sirius commenting that the Director of MLE had an actual suite when telling them about the situation. They had come out into the sitting room, a small, square room with a sofa and two armchairs, the fireplace, and several bookcases. In addition to Sirius, Remus, Harry and Hermione, Andromeda had come along with Tonks and Ted. Also present was Amelia's family. Harry recognized Susan at once, looking over her aunt's bookshelves, and after a moment her mother, Mrs. Maggie Bones, who he had met at afternoon tea last Easter. Also present was a man who must have been Susan’s father, although he was probably twenty years younger than his sister if so, and two boys, one a couple of years younger than them and one who looked about ten.

Finally, there was the werewolf herself. She was sitting on a desk chair someone had dragged into the room in a corner, looking about with an anxious air. She was much younger than Harry had expected. She looked only a couple of years out of school if that, with freckles and a shock of straw-like blonde hair falling down her back. She was clearly identifiable because, in addition to being the only woman in the room Harry didn't know, she had an evidence tag looped around her left wrist on a ribbon and filled out in neat angular handwriting. 

"Everyone," Amelia Bones called, stopping conversation easily with her booming voice. "This is Frangipani. Frangipani, who don't you know here - this is my younger brother, Jake, and his wife Maggie; you know Susan, but her younger brothers here are Howard and William. You met Tonks but only the once--"

"Hi!" Tonks said, waving.

"And these are Sirius's charges, Harry Potter and Hermione Granger."

"It's very nice to meet you," Hermione said firmly. 

"Hi," Harry said, waving. The older of Susan's brothers looked apprehensive, but the younger followed Harry's example in waving hello, and Jake and Maggie Bones went over to greet her more quietly. 

"I locked up everything sensitive earlier, so we can use my office, too - it's a bit small in here," Amelia said, opening the door and lighting the other room with a flick of her wand. "Let me just unpack the food on my desk, if somebody could conjure some extra chairs..." The picnic hamper had obviously been expanded substantially. Amelia pulled enough food for a group twice as large to stuff itself comfortably and had to expand the desk to fit it all.

The crowded nature of the office could have made things awkward, but in some ways it actually helped. Everyone was forced to eat with their plates in their laps, or sit on the floor and defend themselves against being stepped on, and there was no space to lurk in corners having private conversations. 

Frangipani had a stressed, terrified air at the beginning of the evening, but Remus and Sirius managed to engage her in conversation about a muggle fantasy series that Hermione joined enthusiastically and then attempted to explain to Susan, Howard and Harry with varying amounts of success. After a while Harry suspected Susan was misunderstanding Hermione's attempts at explaining muggle ideas about magic on purpose to make everyone else laugh at her, but if so, it was successful. Hermione and Frangipani were rapidly engaged in making a list of popular culture she absolutely had to read or watch in order to understand, and she gave them a placid stare and asked absurd questions about each new addition until Harry and William were howling over them.

Finally, Susan was unable to keep a straight face when asking, "But why would a witch try to keep a pet lion in a wardrobe?" and broke out in giggles herself, before confessing that she had read the Narnia books before starting Hogwarts and knew perfectly well what they were about. Frangipani cried foul and Hermione suggested banishing Susan to the storage closet and threatened to lock her in, at which Susan firmly announced that they were all mad and she was leaving, solemnly got up, and swiped the entire plate of miniature cakes on the coffee table before darting away and taking refuge under Amelia's desk. Hermione scrambled after her, drawing her wand and crying insult, while William followed and gave encouragement.

Harry looked at Frangipani and remarked, "I know it's hard to believe, but they can be a bit overwhelming, at times."

Frangipani snorted, hand over her mouth. "She really had me going for a bit," she said, taking another bite of her roll. "I suppose most of you really _don't_ read muggle fantasy, or was she joking?"

"Er, I suppose," Harry said. "I was raised by my aunt and uncle - they're muggles - until last year, but they didn't approve of reading for fun. Didn't you..." He hesitated; asking if she had been very young when she was bitten, and therefore not attended Hogwarts, seemed very rude.

Frangipani smiled, slightly bitterly. "Meet many other children?" she asked. "Yes, I did, I had a perfectly normal education, on account of I'm a muggle. My family had no idea about magic until I was attacked in 1981, during the last year of the war. I was six." She looked down and picked at the chicken on her plate. 

"The Ministry has people who follow up on muggle werewolf victims, since we can get the curse, but we can't cast protections ourselves. Since the muggle teachers had no idea about me, I went to a day school and we pretended I'd caught a cold whenever the full moon fell during the week. I had a bunch of fake paperwork saying I had a rare illness that made my health delicate. It didn't seem to interfere with my life, much. Then I grew up and had to stay registered with the Ministry, and they won't let me work with muggles on account of me being a danger to them, so..."

"I thought Remus had taken muggle jobs?" Harry asked.

Frangipani stabbed at her chicken, face going fixed. "Remus wasn't registered until last year," she said. "It could've ruined his life, being outed that way, he left the country in part so that he wouldn't be arrested. His boyfriend - sorry, your godfather, isn't he? - paid a lot of money to various people to get his situation regularized without him spending time in jail, before he came back to Britain. And they made a bunch of new laws so that employers in the magical world can't overlook werewolf status in a lot of fields anymore, so you can't even get lucky after having to notify them."

Harry's mouth fell open. He glanced across the room to where Sirius and Remus were talking to Amelia and Andromeda, Sirius sitting half in Remus's lap, leaning his head back against Remus's shoulder. "I had _no idea_ ," he said, remembering his argument with Remus about resigning at the end of third year. "That's horrible."

"It really is," Frangipani said, and rubbed the ribbon attaching the evidence tag to her wrist. "Sorry, I don't mean to sound bitter. Your family and the Boneses have done a lot for me. I'd be dead if it weren't for Madam Bones."

Since she had broached the subject, Harry risked asking, "Do you know why they wanted to frame you?"

"So you believe me, do you?" Frangipani asked, but her tone wasn't hostile. "I have a few guesses. Werewolves - registered and unregistered - talk to each other. There are private networks for helping new people adjust, especially people whose families disown them, and newsletters and stuff. Well, Voldemort's back and he's been sending his agents feeling around them. Greyback's back in the country and his cronies are back to their old game. 

"I was dumb, I recognized it but it was like something out of the history books to me - like I said, I was six when I was bitten at the end of the war - and I was raised in a free society. So I wrote a couple of articles opposing him and sent them to the newsletters, didn't try that hard to cover my tracks. Well, the people who accepted them got beaten up by Greyback's thugs and I felt terrible but nothing happened for months, except people kept telling me I should go into hiding..." She gave up on mutilating her chicken and instead began to stir her potatoes listlessly. "Then I wake up after the full moon out of containment - and mind, I can’t even cast my own containment, it’s done by a professional and I have a bunch of contracts specifying everything done every time it’s renewed - with burn marks like someone had been hitting me with a fucking cattle prod - probably a shock spell, to herd me and agitate me - and human flesh in my mouth. And the body--" Her eyes turned hollow.

"Sorry," Harry said hastily, "I didn't mean to remind you--"

"It's alright." She rapidly took a drink of butterbeer and swallowed several times, as though she was still trying to wash the taste out of her mouth. "The thing is, werewolves hardly ever go after adult humans without being provoked. We're basically just really infectious natural wolves, whatever they tell you about us in Defense classes these days. Kids die - even normal wolves will go after young kids sometimes - but a brainless wolf with no Wolfsbane isn't going to chase down a human and eat them. If they wake up cornered, sure, they'll panic and fight, and a lot of infections happen because of stupid shit - like, a wolf will greet a human they like by trying to shove its tongue in their mouth--"

Harry muffled laughter.

"Yeah, it's really funny to watch with a _normal_ wolf interacting with a human keeper. But if I changed right here and jumped up and put my paws on your shoulders and tried to lick your face - picture it - I'd have my jaws wrapped around your head, and what do you think you'd do?"

"Jerk away, probably," Harry said.

"Yeah. And my wolf brain, which is really friendly but kind of stupid, will go 'Wait! Where are you going? Come back!' and close my mouth. And that's going to mean I bite you in the face, and you're infected; and let's say you assume I'm trying to eat you and panic and curse me, and now I'm in pain and scared and confused because my friend just hurt me..." She sighed. "And a lot of the time attacks happen because humans see werewolves and panic and try to corner us, or hurt us, ineffectively. But you see what I'm getting at, with the attack?"

"It doesn't make any sense," Harry said. 

"Yeah, exactly. I'm not just saying that because I don't want it to be true that I killed someone and ate him - it really _doesn't_ make sense, not according to the data. But try to tell Mulciber that in Creatures - bloody psychopath. I swear he gets off on ordering executions." She shuddered.

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” said Remus. Harry jumped. He had been riveted on Frangipani and hadn’t heard Remus approach. “May I sit?” he asked, taking up the stool Hermione had been perched on before.

“Going to tell Harry I’m a dangerous radical, now?” Frangipani asked, although she was smiling.

“Of course not.” Remus frowned at her. “I think you overstate some of your case, but you’re right about other things. And your arguments provide an alternative to Greyback for werewolves at large, which is undoubtedly why Voldemort tried to have you killed. I can’t thank you enough for that.”

“I don’t overstate my case,” Frangipani said. “You’ve never experienced a normal change.” The shyness from earlier was totally gone. She gestured emphatically with her fork as she spoke. “Look, memory is disrupted by the change - that’s one of the reasons Wolfsbane works - so the wolf wakes up alone, starving and scared, with no idea where it is, and thinks it’s all alone in the world. Then it notices it’s trapped with no food. It goes berserk, it hurts itself, it tries to get out. If somebody sticks their hand in, sure, they get bit. Just _giving wolves food_ decreases change injuries by fifty percent, they did a study on it in Russia last year.”

“Giving wolves half a carcass to devour decreases change injuries,” Remus said, dryly. “And yes, your article about that study has helped _me_ immensely, since the Blacks can afford to buy me a cow every full moon - and the rest of the wolves on their property - but it’s an impractical solution at best society-wide. But my point isn’t that - look, you’re correct, the change doesn’t have to be as miserable as it’s made. As my parents made it for me, even. I know that from experience changing with Animagi around. But suggesting werewolves aren’t dangerous is simply irresponsible--”

“--Yet you never actually bit anyone at Hogwarts despite prancing around outside your containment every month for several years--”

Harry said quickly, “It was nice to meet you, Frangipani,” and received a vague wave in return before he went to see if Hermione and William had reclaimed the cakes from Susan.

They went back to the house very late. Remus kissed Sirius goodbye, but said he was planning to stay overnight with Frangipani along with Tonks. Back at home, Narcissa was sitting in Sirius's kitchen, obviously waiting to see they had gotten back alright. While Hermione bristled at her obvious worry, she at least said nothing terrible before bidding them goodnight.

In the morning, their presents were piled below the Christmas tree instead of at the foot of their beds the way they would have been at school. "I thought we could open them together and then head over to Grimmauld Place for family breakfast once everyone's up," Sirius said, yawning. "Give us all some time for our tactful, sensitive natures to wake up before dealing with Aunt Lucretia..."

Harry snorted.

Remus had arrived home through the Floo early that morning while Harry was still asleep. He was very bleary eyed, and said that he, Tonks and Frangipani had stayed awake all night playing poker. "And a good thing, too," he added tiredly, sitting down and nearly drinking from the milk jug instead of his mug before Sirius hastily substituted the correct vessel. "Creatures sent Macnair around to have a look around three AM--"

"He didn't give you any trouble?" Sirius said.

"I think he was just hoping we'd have left her alone. He wished us a Happy Christmas with an evil sneer - I think he practices those expressions in the mirror - and stomped off when Tonks asked if he wanted to be dealt in."

Sirius snorted. "Good way of dealing with him."

"Yes, I was afraid he'd hang about saying horrible things to gratify himself over making the trip, but there wasn't an easy way of refusing and still sticking around. He wouldn't want anyone suggesting he played cards with half breeds," Remus said wanly. "Anyway, McGonagall offered to spell us for Christmas morning, her family's used to her being absent and the school can spare her now they've got more teachers around to patrol. She came over around dawn and Tonks and I left." He yawned, and belatedly added, "Happy Christmas."

"Happy Christmas," Harry said.

He still was a bit uncertain about opening presents in front of other people, but it was easier with a smaller audience, especially as everyone else had gifts to open as well. Hermione looked slightly overwhelmed by the number of packages in her pile, in fact. Sirius, seeing her face, said ruefully, "You're the only _young_ girl in the family and Lucretia, Druella, Narcissa _and_ Andromeda all miss shopping for someone who will wear their presents. Tonks is more the leather dog collar and studded gauntlet type, she's already had one row with Aunt Lucretia over it, and Cissy."

"Not Druella?" Harry asked.

"Aunt Dru seems to think it's funny. I know for a fact she got her an engraved gold dog tag--"

Everyone else present spluttered.

"--And wrapped it up in a jewelry box to put under the Tonks household tree," Sirius said. "Andy will take that wonderfully when she sees. I'm sort of glad we're not doing Christmas morning with them this year."

"Two knuts Tonks wears it to breakfast," Remus said.

"I'm not taking that bet," Sirius said, very firmly.

"I'll bet you a galleon she wears it to the Christmas feast if she comes," Hermione said, and when everyone looked at her, blushed. "It's the last day of Hannukah, you're supposed to gamble," she said. 

"What, you have a holiday for that?" Harry asked.

"Well, with a dreidl. I think it's mostly supposed to teach you that games of chance are rigged. Are we on?"

"We're on," Sirius said, and solemnly shook her hand across the table. Then they all got started opening presents.

Harry was not surprised, after this conversation, to find that he had an embroidered sash to go with dress robes from Lucretia. At least it was in Gryffindor colors. Cho had sent him goggles for flying in poor weather, professionally transfigured to his glasses prescription, with a teasing note reminding him that they weren't allowed in official Hogwarts games. Hermione had apparently been unable to resist buying him a talking homework planner, but she had accompanied it with one of the books she and Frangipani had been teasing Susan about last night, _The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe_ , and seeing that she had signed her note in the inside cover _Your sister, Hermione_ made Harry's chest feel warm. 

"Thanks, Harry! I've been looking for this for ages," Hermione said, tearing open the wrapping on the book he had bought her.

"You're welcome. Thanks," he said, waving the book at her, and then, turning to the next package, froze. He knew Ron's handwriting very well after four and a half years of friendship. 

Nervously, Harry picked up the package and tore it open. Inside was an extra large package of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans. Trying not to wonder if this was meant as a friendly statement, he turned the box around and eventually found a small, scribbled note taped to the underside:

_Sorry I've been a prat lately. You'd think Percy would be enough of an example what not to do. Friends? -Ron_

"Hermione," Harry said, swallowing. "D'you have something from Ron?"

She looked over, then dug amongst the jewelry boxes. "--Here," she said, sounding surprised, and ripped it open hastily.

Inside was a vial of perfume, which was baffling to Harry as a gift from Ron of all people, but Hermione was scrabbling for the note. Hers seemed to be a lot longer.

"What's it say?" Harry asked several minutes later. Hermione could not possibly have taken this long to finish the note, but she was still staring fixedly down.

She snorted contemptuously. "Well, at least he wants me to speak to him again, but I need a little better of an apology than _that_ ," she said, flicked her wand, and burned the note to ashes.

Harry got tea for both of them before either of them returned to presents.

"Rachel sent me books for Hannukah," Hermione said, opening a larger package and sounding surprised. "She hasn't done that since I was about ten. This one's from you, Sirius?" she asked, picking up what seemed to be the last of the jewelry-sized boxes. The others were piled on top of several folded dress robes.

"Go ahead," Sirius said. "I asked Rachel about it. It's in Black colors, but they’re not so distinctive you can't wear it if you don't end up joining the family."

Hermione opened this one carefully and stopped, frowning at the contents. Harry wasn't sure what she thought for a moment. Then she smiled slightly and slid it into the table so that he could see a sort of open rectangle in gold with a dot next to it, set over an onyx disc. "Thank you, Sirius," she said. "It's beautiful." Being Hermione, she rapidly added to Harry, "It's chai - life - it's a Hebrew word."

"Most pureblood girls your age would have a cross as a display piece," Sirius said, absently slitting open the wrapping on a gift from his smaller pile. "Aunt Dru mentioned it when they were talking about what to give you, and fortunately Narcissa asked me if that was a thing Protestant muggles actually wear this century under the assumption you would be before anyone bought anything, so I had some warning."

Harry, looking down, said in surprise, "I've got something from Mrs. Weasley, too!" It was the usual Weasley jumper and a package of mince pies. Her note was very plain, but there was no hint of coldness in it, even if there was no invitation, either. His throat felt hot. Fortunately, the next gift he opened was a dry looking book on traditional courtship from Draco that he and Hermione could laugh at together.

Harry was examining an enchanted puzzle box from Druella when Sirius checked the clock and said they had better go ahead to Grimmauld Place if they were going to eat with everyone else. They arrived in the midst of a clamor of other people coming and an argument audibly brewing between Tonks, her mother and Lucretia. Harry heard Lucretia say loudly, "What on earth is that on your neck?" and saw Druella turn away from them, hiding a smirk in her head. 

"Hi, Druella," Harry said loudly. "Thank you for the puzzle box."

"Oh, you're welcome, it was a fascinating project to put together," she said, coming over to kiss his cheeks. "Happy Christmas - and is it Happy Hannukah instead?" she asked Hermione.

"Either's fine," Hermione said. "Thanks for the bracelets."

"You're welcome, dove. Come on, shall we get out of here before they get any louder?" Druella winked. They all quickly escaped to the same dining room from the welcome home dinner, as there was only one cleaned room with a table large enough for most of the family to sit at together. Breakfast was already out in magically-warmed platters, so they put together their plates and sat down quickly.

"Oh, Sirius," Druella said when he came after them, "A few things were sent to the house directly. I went over them for curses but perhaps you should have a look as well." 

"Curses?" Sirius asked, but followed her to where an enchanted bubble was enclosing several packages. "--Ah," he said.

"I don't imagine they're actually trapped, because we know she can do other people's handwriting, including yours and Andy's at least, and she didn’t bother," Druella went on calmly, raising Harry's suspicions, "But it would be foolish not to have multiple people check."

"Er - yeah," Sirius said, swallowing, and raised his wand. A few minutes later, he said, "No, it's clear as far as I can tell - I mean, you're probably a better Curse-Breaker than me anyway... Who are they for?"

"You, Andy and Cissy, Draco, and me," Druella said. "I suppose we may as well distribute, then."

Sirius's gift was the outlier in terms of shape. The others were smallish rectangular packages, whereas his seemed to be a wrapped scroll case. Harry watched him open the packaging and slide out a thick piece of parchment. When Sirius unwrapped it, his breath caught.

"What is it?" Hermione asked, also watching anxiously. "Is it horrible?"

"No, it's-" Sirius put a hand to his face and sighed. "It's her, alright. Go ahead and look," he said.

Harry and Hermione came over to look over his shoulders. Bellatrix had sent him a portrait: a detailed ink drawing of her and Sirius. They were pictured in a mirror, Bellatrix seated and Sirius standing behind her, looking no older than Harry and Hermione although immediately recognizable. He was caught in the act of adjusting Bellatrix's veil for her, either removing it or covering her face. The fabric was suggested with a few delicate strokes, showing how sheer it was.

"Her wedding dress?" Druella asked, looking over.

"I," Sirius sighed, "We all know I was an idiot at sixteen? I snuck into the Cathedral to see her before it."

" _Sirius_!" said Narcissa, who Harry hadn't seen come in.

"It wasn't completely stupid," Sirius said ruefully. "She got married in the Catholic Wizarding Cathedral in London, and there was a wedding mass, so they had to let the congregation come. It isn't like most of them had ever seen me in person before. But yeah, she told me I was an idiot too. Made me leave after ten or fifteen minutes." 

He touched the signature near the corner. It was only a few initials, _BBL_. "She did this herself," he said, speaking to Harry and Hermione. "She sort of stopped drawing much during the war - no time for it - but I suppose she hasn't got the legitimate second life to waste her time right now... What was yours?" he asked Narcissa.

"A hair pin." Narcissa shrugged, holding it up; sapphires glinted in the lamplight. "I'm more interested in what she sent Andromeda, truthfully. Mother and I have her usual sort of choices."

The answer to this question had to wait until Andromeda and Tonks stormed into the dining room, close together but pointedly ignoring each other. Tonks promptly made a beeline across the room to Harry and Hermione, and tossed them a couple of slim paper packages. "Wotcher," she said, winking.

Harry ripped his open and went scarlet. " _Tonks_!" he said.

She grinned "From me and Evie," she said. "Don't tell me you're not interested yet."

Harry muttered something inarticulate and stuffed the calendar Tonks had bought him, which proclaimed to have twelve pictures of female Quidditch stars photographed skyclad, under the cloak he had draped over the back of his chair. Hermione had already hidden whatever Tonks had given her, but she was nearly as red as him. He was distracted from his embarrassment when Andromeda, opening the gift Bellatrix had sent her, gave a soft gasp.

"What is it?" Sirius said, jerking up. Andromeda held up for display a stunning opal and silver necklace, consisting of ranks of linked opal stones in a wide crescent shape.

"Hang on," Tonks said, distracted from her spite by worry, "Opals are frequently cursed, they take enchantment too easily."

"No," Andy said, voice cracking, swallowed, and tried again. "She - I was born in October. She always used to buy me opals, it was our joke. They were my favorite stone, as a girl, because Bella said that all the opals in the world belonged to me." She stared, fixed at the necklace. "That's why I stopped..."

"Is that silver?" Druella asked, looking over from across the room.

"White gold," Andromeda said, after flicking her wand out to check. "Oh, _hell_." She sat down hard and pressed her hands to her eyes, necklace still dangling between them, obviously struggling hard not to cry.

After that everyone at last sat down to eat, although Andromeda looked teary eyed throughout breakfast. She had carefully fastened the necklace on over her robes, although the neckline didn't match its shape. The argument about Tonks's dog tag - a gold disc with the Black crest engraved on it dangling from a leather collar, which, Harry thought, was probably the only way to get Tonks to wear anything with the family symbol on it - had apparently been forestalled.

Draco sat down next to Hermione and thanked them for their gifts. Hermione had sent him a book on theoretical Arithmancy, Harry, a deluxe broomstick service kit. He proceeded to tease Harry about uses of the courtship book for Cho until Sirius called everyone's attention to explain when and where the feast would be taking place and remind them that if they chose to attend, they should treat the Black tenants and vassals with respect, "As human beings with equal dignity to us," he said dryly, looking pointedly at several of the adults.

When this announcement was done, Andromeda, looking serene again, cleared her throat. When all eyes were on her, she said, "We've one more for breakfast, actually, if you don't mind. I wanted to give him a chance to wake up, and the family drama time to settle, before I went to get him. He's a bit of a night owl."

"Alright," Sirius said, looking bemused. "I take it you want to be mysterious about it?"

"Mm. I'll be back in a moment," Andromeda said, getting up. They heard her go downstairs, presumably to Disapparate from the front step. Only a few minutes later, two sets of footsteps came back up. Andromeda came back through the dining room door accompanied by a young man around the same age as Tonks. He was smiling shyly, head ducked, as he came in, but he lifted his face so that Harry could see him as he approached the table. He had curly, black hair like the Black family, but dark brown eyes and a broader jaw. He was wearing robes, but they were open in the front, with clothing underneath that was _almost_ like old-fashioned muggle trousers, shirt and cravat, but with a difference Harry couldn't identify. He wore a rosebud in the button hole of his robe collar, and his hair was gathered in a ponytail at the back of his neck.

"Everyone," Andromeda said, shooting at look at him that was mixed between fondness and amusement, "This is Sotero Lestrange. He's taken a job at Hogwarts. He wanted to see Britain, now he's old enough to come back by himself."

Narcissa had been staring, wide eyed. She gasped softly at this, and said, "We thought you were _dead_!"

"I did rather get that impression as well," Druella said dryly, although she was rising already. "I don't know if you remember me, dove--"

"I do, a little," Sotero said, and crossed the room willingly to hug her. "Good morning and Happy Christmas, Grandmother. And you, Aunt Narcissa," he said, turning to hug her. 

If Druella was his grandmother, and Narcissa his aunt, then this must be Bellatrix Lestrange's son.

He had a faint accent in English, but spoke it easily. "I'm sorry to have upset you," he went on, smiling and ducking his head again, as though abashed by it. "Our parents had us sent to France after Voldemort was destroyed, with Aunt Myrtle, in case anyone retaliated against us. They thought people might assume we were his children. Mother hadn't wanted anyone to know about us who didn't have to, until the war was over. I think she must have considered it a good thing, that the house burned when they were arrested and people who knew thought we had died in the fire. In France we aren't anyone important, just another two Lestrange cousins."

"We?" Sirius croaked at last.

"My little sister and I," Sotero said, turning to him. "Amaryllis Lestrange. She was born in 1980, she's - I think the same age as your godson? Almost exactly the same; she was born on August second."

"I - I see," Sirius said, and swallowed hard; then he rose and said more normally, "I'm sorry, this is a shock. I had no idea Bellatrix had children, let alone children who were supposed to have died in Auror crossfire. I'm sure you know, but I'm Sirius Black." He shook Sotero's hand as he reached him. "You know your grandmother and aunts, but this is my aunt Lucretia, Narcissa's son Draco Black, my partner, Remus Lupin, my godson Harry Potter, and a foster child of the house, Hermione Granger. Do you know Andromeda's husband and daughter?"

"No," Tonks said, also gaping. "I mean, hi, I'm Tonks."

"Nymphadora," Andromeda said.

" _Tonks_ ," Tonks said.

"We've written," Ted said, rising. "It's nice to finally meet you in person."

"A pleasure," Sotero said and shook Ted's hand as well with no apparent hesitation.

"I'd ask about your politics but I don't think I need to," Sirius said, then. "Nice rosebud. I take it you’re on the radical side of magical France?"

Sotero laughed ruefully. "If the Duke was certain what branch of the family I was from - or not too embarrassed to have to ask - I'd probably have been disowned by now. I'm afraid I have an ulterior motive coming to Britain. I had a clerk job in the Office of International Diplomacy and I got caught writing pro-Commune letters. It was strongly suggested to me that I get out of the country, lest I embarrass the clan Lestrange by spending time in jail."

"And you came to _Britain_?" Tonks said. “Not Commune-controlled territory?”

"Sure." Sotero grinned at her. "What's the use of being a revolutionary in a country that's already had its revolution?"

"Oh, Morgana," Narcissa muttered. 

"You can tell he's Bella's, can't you?" Andromeda said, sounding delighted. "Anyway, Sirius, Dumbledore was perfectly happy to hire a political refugee from France, although I believe Sotero didn't mention he was from a recently British branch of the family. You don't have to take immediate responsibility for him, but I told him you'd certainly get along."

"You were writing pro-Commune letters?" Hermione demanded, suddenly appearing to remember how to talk. "To a newspaper, was it?"

"It was," Sotero said, turning to face her.

"Which paper?" Hermione asked, and immediately launched into an inquiry in French. Sotero's face lit up. He pulled out the empty chair next to her and straddled it backwards, then began to declaim rapidly and passionately back whenever he could get a word in.

Draco watched this for several exchanges, eyebrows raising millimeter by millimeter, until finally he sighed huffily, rolled his eyes, and turned back to butter a fresh piece of toast. After a while he remarked, "Harry, we'd better stick together - now there are two of them."

Harry laughed unwillingly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On werewolves: So, the canon on how they behave and how dangerous they are is all over the place. I think JKR probably intended them to come off as monstrous in wolf form, but then there's Ron in HBP saying that death is unusual but sometimes really young kids die, which would put them more in line with bites by domestic dogs. Many sources that talk about how dangerous they are are also clearly unreliable in-universe, eg. Snape's assigned reading. The only time we see a werewolf, Lupin is knocked away from the trio by Padfoot and doesn't seem to make an attempt to chase them down later, since he doesn't appear again.
> 
> I think the easiest way to reconcile this, especially with the way people like Dumbledore and Lily respond to the infamous prank, is something like what I've suggested here - that werewolves certainly are unpredictable and unsocialized large canids, and the fact that a shifted werewolf is likely to be confused, frightened and in pain doesn't help, but the risk of infection because of breaking the skin defensively or playfully is much higher than the risk of them deliberately hunting down humans. This also makes the whole lycanthropy = AIDS metaphor at least slightly less disturbing and homophobic, IMO.
> 
> On French politics: magical France had a relationship with the monarchy similar to magical Britain's at the time of the Statute, but the Revolution kind of fucked that up, not to mention Napoleon and all of the political instability after him. I don't have the fine details really ironed out yet. The Commune Sirius and Sotero mention is named after the Paris Commune but not actually related in any way.
> 
> Liked this? [Reblog it on tumblr](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/642481970337742848/the-glass-fortress-chpt-23-christmas), or come talk to me!


	25. Gaunt and Lingering

They couldn't spend much time dwelling on Andromeda's surprise. Late breakfast turned into lunch as people came and went from the table, and before long they were all getting ready for the Black Christmas feast, hosted at the small medieval hall where the highest official of the Black House court system lived. Sotero laughingly begged off attendance, telling them that he was still hoping the Ministry wouldn't notice he was in the country. "Headmaster Dumbledore agreed not to publicize my name, although he thinks it's only because of my legal troubles in France," he added, before excusing himself back to return to his lodgings.

The Christmas Day feast set off a round of parties that seemed very similar to Harry. They would get dressed formally and Apparate in a group to a hall, where there would be immense quantities of food and alcohol, turning at some point into music and dancing. Occasionally there would be games, or displays, or toasts or speeches, depending on if the family who was hosting had traditions or special business to conduct. 

They saw classmates at many of the parties, and not only pureblood or high ranking ones; many of the parties were less exclusive, and many teenagers were permitted to bring friends as guests. Harry was also introduced to a large number of adults who he was supposed to know and promptly mostly forgot, although Narcissa made him take notes in case he needed to know who he had met when later; apparently several of them were wealthier Potter tenants or otherwise associated with his family. He was also introduced to Symon Weasley, his deceased great-aunt's husband and the head of Ron's family, although it was a very short conversation before he was hustled away to deal with an issue between two of his many cousins.

“Why haven’t we seen any other Weasleys?” Hermione asked, staring fixedly away from Harry.

Sirius half-smiled. “It’s less of an issue than it used to be, but a lot of traditional society won’t host them because they’re Protestants - one of their Heads converted the whole family to the Church of England a while ago. They lost a lot of people during the war and that’s regained some respect for the family, but Symon still doesn’t generally bring many relations, even if he’s invited to. I think he’s said it helps prevent infighting, too, he really has too many family members to pass around favors evenly.”

Harry wasn’t sure whether to be relieved that there would not be another argument between Ron and Hermione or disappointed he wouldn’t have a chance to see Ron on his own. Hermione was still stewing angrily over Ron’s attempt at an apology, in which he had told her that since he had wasted the money buying her a present he didn’t want to throw it away, too. Harry couldn’t really blame her for being displeased by this, but he missed Ron all the more while seeing so many other classmates.

All in all, it probably wasn't how Harry would have chosen to spend a holiday, but it wasn't as bad as he might have feared. It helped that the teenagers tended to spend a lot of time together and often outside, having mostly friendly contests like the Notts’ bridal chase. Harry would have liked to spend more time with Sirius, but this was mollified by the knowledge that Sirius missed it, too, and made sure to occasionally arrange time with him during the day. While most of them were free to attend parties or not as they wanted, Sirius was not really going for fun, but working. Often Harry would find him talking to someone about politics or business, whether in support of Amelia Bones's political campaign or asking after people who might be interested in moving into the unoccupied properties on Black lands, or other, more obscure issues.

A few days after Christmas, they were back at the Bones family house Harry had visited last Easter, Beechcroft House, for a party. The whole house was opened, not only the small central hall or the parlor where tea had been served, and fairy lights were strung over the walled garden where he had once awkwardly listened to Narcissa try to persuade Amelia to get involved in politics. Harry was wondering if that could really have been only the previous spring when the door opened and Cho came in.

"There you are!" she said, smiling, and his mouth went dry. 

She was wearing red, a color a few shades darker than Auror robes, with a pattern in gold thread worked in it: his house colors, although they were a common combination. The robes were fitted across her chest and stomach, then flared at the hip and elbow. The muscle he knew she had from Quidditch was mostly hidden, but the robes were low cut over the chest, much lower than her school robes. For a moment Harry was back in fourth year, struggling to work out how to ask her out.

"Hi," he croaked belatedly. "Er, Happy Christmas."

"Happy Christmas," Cho said breathlessly, crossing the garden to where he stood by the wall, and kissed him. 

Harry clung back to her. He felt as though something was alive between them, like he had been drowning all evening without her and could only now breathe. He had seen her just two weeks ago, but something had changed, something about her, or about him. Or it was just that the time away had made it more obvious, or that neither of them was distracted by schoolwork. He ran his fingers through Cho’s hair - loose and glossy, she nearly always wore it loose - and felt her, warm against his chest, and then he stopped thinking.

Cho groaned into his mouth some time later and said, voice gone breathy, "I locked the door."

"Won't someone notice?" Harry said, eyes shut into her hair. It was hard to think.

"Maybe. Doesn't matter, it happens loads at parties, and I fogged the glass on the windows," Cho said. At some point they had sat down on the bench, and they were leaning into each other heavily. Thank Merlin, Harry thought hazily, that the Boneses had put temperature control charms on the garden for the party and they weren't freezing, or sitting in snow melt. "Keep going, then?"

"Mm," Harry said, opened his eyes, and kissed her again, then her jaw. 

Sirius had talked to him about this, and when it became apparent that Harry was too uncomfortable to absorb much, given him a book and told him to ask him about anything necessary. It had seemed terribly, terribly awkward in diagrams or in the stilted prose of a textbook, and Harry had not been remotely able to imagine doing it.

It turned out that the reality was better, or different, or it was just that there was so much else to focus on - the catch of the gold threads in Cho's robes over his fingers, the way her breath felt hot on his neck when she buried her face in it, the smell of her shampoo - that it was easy to forget to be nervous. 

At some point Harry helped Cho up for a moment and spread his winter cloak on the bench, because he had come from watching a horse race outside and still had it, and they lay down on the cloak instead of the slightly splintery bench. It was narrow, but they were both Quidditch players and balanced well, with a certain amount of giggling. Then Cho was sliding his robes up, fingers catching on the new scars the sphinx Elpis's claws had left over his ribs...

Afterwards he nuzzled her hair, feeling suddenly anxious - and at the same time slightly smug that lying down he could actually reach the top of her head to do it. "Was it - alright?" he said.

She opened her eyes again and smiled. "Yes," she said, quietly, but intently. "Thank you."

"Mm. You too," Harry said, and they laughed. He wanted to ask if she'd done it before, if she had any idea how they'd done. He stopped himself, thinking that it would be a question all too easy to take badly and he'd have a better chance if he did it when he was more awake. "Do you have to leave soon, or anything?"

"Nah, Mum's telling war stories with Amelia Bones and a couple of others, she'll be here all night," Cho said, and yawned. "We have time."

"Until someone tries to break into the garden, you mean," Harry said.

"Mm." Cho glanced down them. "It's alright, I've got nothing to be embarrassed by."

"Easy for you to say," Harry said, and they laughed. He was aware that they should get up, or they really would end up in an embarrassing position when someone tried to get into the garden, but she was warm and the cloak was warm and it was very late at night, and it was easy to close his eyes for just a moment...

There was a tower on a hill, built of ancient bricks, and he was spiraling down towards it from the air. Then he seemed to blink and instead he was in a round hall lit by firelight. He knew that this room was within the tower, that he had only continued his journey. He stood at the hearth of the room in the flickering light, in the hall in the bottom of the tower.

A woman knelt before him.

She had long, curling black hair, and her face was pressed almost flat to the floor, so that it spread around her and fanned over the flagstones. She wore dark colors, and in the shadows they blended into her hair, so that it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. But he could see a slice of her pale face, dark lashes against her skin, and the blotchy red her cheeks had begun to turn; and the edge of her robe had hiked up, showing the sole of one shoe.

"My lord," she said, her voice thick with emotion. "I am not worthy of your forgiveness--"

"Perhaps you shall not have it," a voice hissed, high and cold. It was coming from where he stood in the room. It _was_ him. "You have been unsuccessful, Bella."

"No, my lord! Angharad Abbott is dead; Emmeline Vance is dead, and--” She named more people, meaningless to him. “The last was not even reported. We are readying ourselves--"

"Excuses," the voice hissed, and the woman on the floor moaned and twitched as though he had cursed her, though Harry knew no curse had been cast. It was merely the prospect of his anger that disturbed her. "The werewolf traitor is sheltered by Amelia Bones. Hannah Abbott has been allowed to inherit, sheltered by _your sister_."

"Narcissa - doesn't know - what she does--" Bellatrix gasped with emotion. "If she knew she defied you she would not--"

"She knew _exactly_ what she did when she went to the shelter of your cousin Sirius Black! She has not responded to letters!"

"She is as loyal as I am, my lord," Bellatrix said, eyes shut hard, and flinched when he took a step towards her. "She knows not that she defies your orders. If you would allow me to convey them to her--"

"Then you agree that your cousin is the problem?" the voice hissed.

Bellatrix opened her eyes, then. The visible one was gray and filled with tears. "My lord," she said, chest heaving. "My lord, I beg your mercy on behalf of--"

"No. You have had enough time to persuade him, Bella." Footsteps; the woman on the floor grew nearer. "I will tolerate his defiance no longer, Bella. You will see him killed for me."

"The plan--" Bella started, and then stopped; she looked terrified.

"The plan does not require _his_ life. You need not strike the blow yourself. I am merciful. But he must die."

Bellatrix raised her head off the floor, and began to push herself up, wearily. Harry, or whoever he was in the dream, retreated a step, knowing that this was new. She had not reacted like this before. When she was sitting on her heels, able to look him in the eyes, she raised her chin and said one word: "No."

Harry's scar exploded with pain. Then his hip and head did, and his vision cleared, and he realized he had rolled off of Cho and fallen on his back onto the garden path.

"Harry!" Cho was leaning over him, looking frantic. "Are you okay? What happened?"

Harry raised a hand to his head and felt a trickle of blood on the side. He had, he realized, head aching, forgotten his mind magic lessons before falling asleep for the first time in months. "Just a nightmare," he said, mouth dry for an entirely different reason. "I must have rolled over and fallen--"

"Are you okay? You hit your head." Cho slid to her knees next to him and fished her wand out of her discarded dress's sleeve. " _Episkey_ \--"

The pain in the side of his head vanished, but his forehead throbbed worse than ever. "Fine," he lied. "I'm fine." A fresh jolt of pain rushed through him, and he barely managed to stop himself from saying, _he's angry_.

He wondered if Sirius's cousin was right now dying for her refusal of Voldemort's order to kill him: the only thing, apparently, which she would not do.

Panic jolted through him as he recalled the order. Bellatrix was not Voldemort's only follower, and surely if it was so important to him he would not wait long before giving another the job. Harry fished for his clothes rapidly. "I've got to get to Sirius--"

"What's wrong?" Cho asked again, putting a hand on his shoulder. He barely stopped himself from knocking it away. Worry, fear and hurt were warring on her face, and he knew he had to do something about it before he went.

He had been so happy, a few minutes ago.

He leaned close and said, softly, "It was a vision. I'm supposed to be shutting them out - remember? - but I'm still supposed to tell Sirius whenever I can't."

"Oh!" Cho's eyes cleared at once. "Let me help find your clothes - here's a shoe--"

Harry got dressed in record time. People smirked and called out teasing comments as they made their way through the corridor back to the main hall, and they must have been obviously mussed, but at the moment Harry couldn't bring himself to care. They found Sirius talking to an elderly woman Harry vaguely recognized as the Black's Honor Court sheriff, whose house they had had the Black Christmas feast at, and Narcissa. There was a wide clear space around the three of them on the floor, but at the moment Harry noticed only that it made it easier to get to them. Sirius took one look at Harry and Cho and said, "I'm sorry, Gentian, I think we'd better finish with this tomorrow. Harry, are you alright?"

Harry waited only the bare minimum amount of time to have some privacy before he sat down and said, "I had a vision of Voldemort with your cousin." He outlined what he had seen quickly, trying to make it as neutral as he could and not let out the way Bellatrix's face had rippled with fear or the desperation in her voice. He tried, also, not to watch Cho's fascination.

"Dear Morgana," Sirius said at the end of it. He had been holding, idly, a wine glass, mostly full. Harry knew by now that holding a drink was the best way to stop people from pressing more on you at these parties, and Sirius usually kept his first in his hand. Now Sirius raised it to his lips and drained it, before sitting it down and putting his hand over his face. "Dear God in Heaven," he said, slumping back in his chair.

"Sirius?" Harry said anxiously.

"--It's not your fault," he said hastily. "Thank you for telling me. I - hang on," Sirius said, "I thought you hadn't had visions in your sleep anymore?"

Harry shook his head. "I hadn't until now," he said. "Er, I - fell asleep--" He knew he was blushing, "And I forgot about the exercises. Do you think it was true?"

"Right," Sirius said, and swallowed. "It sounds like her. I don't know that we have any way of knowing, but I can certainly think of a half dozen reasons he'd want to kill me in particular right now."

"Then shouldn't we go home?" Harry asked anxiously.

Sirius smiled sadly back, looking around. "Tonight, probably. I won't be able to do anything, knowing Bella--" He took a deep breath. "But the most likely reason Voldemort wants me dead is because of things like this, social influence, the things I say and who I say them to. I can't hide at home or it's as good as letting him kill me." He took a slow breath. "But yes, tonight we'd better go. I beg your pardon for stealing him, Miss Chang."

"You're excused," Cho said, voice light, but her face was tight with worry. She kissed Harry again quickly before they went to find the others and go home.

Harry's scar prickled incessantly for several days. He worked on blocking out intrusions and preventing his own mind from going wandering out of his head, but nevertheless he was aware that Voldemort was often angry. More disturbing than his fury were the flashes of an entirely different attitude Harry sometimes received, which he characterized after the third or fourth time as an exasperated fondness he would have associated more readily with his attitude towards Ron's loyalty to the Chudley Cannons. He told Sirius that as far as he could tell - if the information was good at all - his cousin was still alive, because Voldemort was still fighting with her, and tried not to let himself dwell and risk opening his mind further to Voldemort's.

Meanwhile there were family meetings and arguments about security. Fortunately, most of the rest of the family took Sirius's safety rather more seriously than he did himself, so that Harry did not have to worry incessantly that Sirius would behave the way he had immediately after escaping prison. After Narcissa pointed out that if Sirius died, Draco would inherit the house and be in immediate danger of execution if he kept up his current political ideas, Sirius agreed reluctantly that he would always have someone with him when leaving the house, and make sure someone else knew where they were going and when they expected to return, although he became somewhat snappish in the aftermath. He pointed out that this should extend to all other adults, too, since Voldemort had made a habit of kidnapping people to lure out family members last war, but if he had hoped this would make her back down it didn't.

Sirius did keep going to parties - as he had said, it was important for their political influence, and he was doing a lot of practical work at them - but the teenagers were encouraged not to stay as long or come as often so that the adults did not have to be constantly engaged in watching them. Harry, Hermione and Draco were again stuck mostly hanging around the houses and going back and forth by Floo as they had over the summer, although on the bright side most of the adults were around for the holidays and available to take them out periodically.

On the thirty-first, Dumbledore and Sirius again made time so that they could return to the Gaunt shack and go after the Horcrux there, something Harry was excited by. Apparently the thirty-first, as the last day of the year, was magically significant and would make certain unbinding spells easier. 

They once again Apparated to the edge of the protective enchantments on the path and walked through the snow and between the tangled hedgerows to the Gaunt house, and Harry once more spoke to the snake nailed to the door to allow them inside the house. This time, the three of them went inside, although not until Dumbledore and Sirius had cast a number of spells to detect curses lingering inside, and canceled several general protective spells that were apparently not too obscure and had probably been left by the Gaunts themselves.

"What's the use of having a security spell anyone can just take down?" Harry asked.

Dumbledore and Sirius exchanged glances for once. "Well, not just anyone could," Sirius said. "Several of these have to be overpowered for the counters to work properly, and your Headmaster has rather a spectacular amount of power for a wizard."

"And Sirius is not too shabby himself," Dumbledore said, inclining his head. "In addition, these spells were cast decades ago, and have faded somewhat in time without renewal. Besides which, in general the maintainer of a magical residence will be able to feel spells falling, especially if they are on the premises. Were the house occupied, Marvolo Gaunt would be coming out, wand raised, to see who was taking down his security spell work. But as things remain, there is no one to alert. I believe it safe to proceed inside now, if you concur?"

The main room of the Gaunt shack was just as it had been in the memory, but several times dustier and dirtier. One of the windows was broken, glass in shards on the floor under it, and one of the shelves that had contained dishes had collapsed, leaving its contents in another pile on the floor. Sirius and Dumbledore advanced first into the room. After a few minutes, Sirius said, "It isn't in here."

"The door on the left, I believe," Dumbledore said. He cast several charms on the door, then frowned. "A runic protective charm, I believe, if we can uncover the writing..."

Sirius advanced, and frowned at the door, then simply pressed his hand to it. The door seemed to ripple; then a wave emanated from Sirius's hand at the center, revealing the details of a diagram as it passed.

"Enchanted to check for pureblood British ancestry," Sirius said, grimacing. "I know the spell, it’s used frequently by certain people. Good job you brought me, much faster than breaking the spells. Shall we have a look?" 

The next half hour was fairly boring. Harry tried to follow the explanation Sirius gave him, but his Arithmancy was not quite good enough, and he had little knowledge of Runes at all. Mostly he fetched dictionaries out of the expanded bag they had brought when requested, and tried not to feel too useless. Eventually Dumbledore and Sirius agreed on a solution, which Dumbledore burned into the center of the door with his wand; there was a click as the last rune was completed, and the door swung open on its own, unlocked.

Harry looked through it, past Dumbledore and Sirius, and stared.

If the rest of the house was a ruin, this one room alone appeared quite normal, as though its occupant had only stepped out for a moment. It was very small, set under the eaves of the house, and reminded Harry unpleasantly for a moment of the cupboard in which he had once lived.

This room was much cleaner than the rest of the house had been, even in the memory. The walls and floorboards had been whitewashed painstakingly and scrubbed clean. There was a little pallet on the floor, made up with worn but clean sheets, and a single woolen blanket with several patches. Next to it was a poorly mended trunk that must have contained clothing and a single, wobbly chair, and a few tattered pictures were tacked up to the wall close to the head of the pallet. That was all.

This, Harry realized, was undoubtedly Merope Gaunt's room - mysteriously untouched by the ages.

No sooner had he thought this than his eyes caught movement by the chair. Spinning to face it he saw, as though she was alive and just as she had been in the memory, Merope Gaunt.

No, he thought, heart pounding, she was not exactly the same. She was not wearing patched and worn robes, but muggle clothing that would not have been out of place, he supposed, in London of the twenties. She had a pale blue dress that came only past her knees, and heels, and her hair was pinned up instead of straggling around her face, hiding it from view. She raised her chin to look at him and said - and he could hear the undercurrent of Parseltongue now that he knew to expect it - "You're not welcome."

"I'm sorry," he said, automatically speaking the same language. "We didn't mean to - er - intrude." Painfully the memory came to him of Uncle Vernon pushing into the cupboard with his huge, ham-sized fists, and how much more of a violation it had felt for coming in the only place Harry had felt was really his.

"What?" Sirius said, looking up.

"Do you see her?" Harry asked, hoping it had come out in English.

"Who?" Sirius said.

"Ah," Dumbledore said, following Harry's gaze to the chair, although it was evident that he was not looking at Merope, either. "I take it we are making the acquaintance of Merope Gaunt?" He gave a little bow in the direction of the chair.

Merope's eyes focused on him. She scowled, and said to Harry, again in Parseltongue, "He's _less_ welcome."

Harry snorted involuntarily. 

"I know why you're here," Merope said, and crossed her arms. "You've come to kill my son."

Harry's stomach lurched. He couldn't really argue, since it was true. If he lied it would be obvious as soon as they attempted to access or remove the Horcrux, and it was better, he thought, to find out what Merope was and what she could do about it before while they were prepared. 

"I'm sorry," he said. "We don't want - _I_ don't want - to kill anyone. But he's going to kill me first, he murdered my parents when I was just a baby, and he thinks he's got to kill me because of a prophecy."

Belatedly it occurred to him that Merope might well be a real memory, meant to frighten him off, and not capable of understanding this argument at all. But she seemed to be listening to him. She tilted her head thoughtfully, watching Harry. What she said was, "You're a Speaker. Are you a Gaunt?"

"I don't know," Harry said. "I got it from my mother, but she was muggleborn as far as we know." Belatedly he wondered if this had been a good idea, but then, Merope had married a muggle herself, hadn't she?

Merope tilted her head the other way at this. "Where was she from? Your mother."

"Er, Cokesworth," Harry said. "In the Midlands. She had a grandfather from Wales. I don't know about the rest. Her name was Evans," he added, belatedly.

Merope shrugged. "I don't know," she said. "If you'd like to find out, I suppose you could try to drink out of the silver cup in the kitchen, but if you aren't family the results might be unpleasant." She looked up. "Tell him to stop that," she added.

Harry glanced at the others and saw that Dumbledore and Sirius had gathered around a spot on the floorboards. "Wait!" he said hastily in English. They looked at him and he said, "Er, just - don't do anything for a minute, alright? Let me talk to her."

"I'm sorry about your parents," said Merope in Parseltongue, "But I'm still not going to let you kill him even if we wait a few minutes to talk about it first."

"Why enchant the door against non-purebloods?" Harry asked. "If you don't care?"

"He did that when he was here, not me," Merope said. "I couldn't do a runic trap if my life depended on it, back when I had one. I wasn't exactly a great witch, you know."

Harry, recalling the memory, agreed, but did not feel saying so would be tactful. "You could do some magic, couldn't you?" he said. "I mean, er, your husband..."

"What about him?" Merope looked perturbed. "He isn't _still_ telling tales about me, is he? It's been - what year is it?"

"It's New Year's Eve, 1995," Harry said.

"Almost seventy years, then," she said. "He must be nearly a hundred years old. Doesn't he have something better to do than make up lies about his first wife by now? I can't imagine they're still bothering him about why he ran off with me. The whole thing lasted six months, you know."

Harry hesitated. "He's dead, actually," he said. "He died fifty years ago."

Merope blinked. "What happened?" she said.

"Your son killed him," Harry said, tersely, expecting that this might infuriate her.

Her eyes widened, then she bit her lip. "Well," she said, sounding unhappy. "I knew he took after his grandfather in temperament. And Tom did have a temper - my husband, I mean. I suppose he may have started it, especially if my son tracked him down."

"How much do you know about your son?" Harry said.

"He called me up to protect his Horcrux," Merope said. "He takes after the Gaunt line - before it degenerated into insane men raping their sisters to produce pure offspring, I mean. He's a sorcerer. He said he had enemies who would want to kill him, and I could protect him in death even though I couldn't in life," she said proudly. Then, looking more uncertain, she added, "I wasn't picturing a teenager, though."

"He started a war to get rid of muggleborns and cut off society from muggles," Harry said. "His followers killed a load of people, anyone who disagreed with him too publicly. Then he tried to kill me, because of the prophecy, but my mother - er - died to save me, and did something so that it made his curse rebound. He was disembodied, but he's trying to come back."

Merope hesitated a long moment; then she said, "She probably was a Gaunt."

"What?"

"Your mother," she elaborated. "I mean, there are any number of ways to do that ritually, I know _that_ from stories even if I don't know how, but I can see it on you now I'm dead - the blood guilt from a kin slayer. That's how it would work. He's stained his soul trying to kill his baby cousin." She had been growing more agitated ever since Harry told her Voldemort had killed his father. Now she buried her face in her hands and made a noise like a stifled sob. "Oh, _Tom_..."

"I'm sorry," Harry said, and stepped tentatively forward, extending a hand, although he wasn't sure it was a good idea. His hand settled against her shoulder. It was solid, not ephemeral like a ghost, but did not feel quite like a living thing. It was more like he was touching a statue covered in cloth.

She made a strangled noise like she was fighting off tears, then said, voice thick, "Well, he's made his bed. I can't do anything for it, he's got to lie in it now." She swallowed and raised her head, then, said alarm in her voice, "He shouldn't touch that--"

Harry spun and saw Dumbledore outstretching his hand towards a ring they were levitating out of a hole in the floorboards, his gaze far away. Without thinking he darted forward, throwing himself in between Dumbledore and the ring, and his hand brushed the edge--

His world filled with pain. Tears blurred his vision. It took long moments to locate the pain's origin in his hand, to notice Dumbledore and Sirius's terse voices or feel Sirius's arms wrapped around him. Beyond them Merope was still speaking agitatedly but he couldn't make out her words, and Dumbledore and Sirius still did not seem to perceive her. Then he knew no more.

He woke some time later, and feeling the scratchy wool under his cheek knew he had been laid out in Merope's pallet. Merope was talking again, but this time he heard Dumbledore answering her. She seemed to be telling them about the curse Voldemort had cast on the ring, Harry realized slowly, although her explanation was straggling and vague.

"Harry," Sirius said, above him. Harry opened his eyes and saw Sirius kneeling above his head, a terrible look in his face, like the world was ending. He turned his head to look at his hand, and regretted it at the sight of withered flesh trailing up to his elbow. "Harry, do you hear me?"

"I hear you," he whispered. The words took effort.

"We've isolated the pain from the curse, we're working on breaking it," Sirius said, and looked up at Dumbledore. "We're - we'll figure something out, alright?"

Harry could see that Sirius did not believe it at once.

"Tell Hermione I love her," Harry said thickly. "And Ron." Ron would feel terrible if Harry died when they weren't speaking. "I'm sorry, I - I shouldn't have touched it--"

Sirius tried to smile. "What you did was very brave," he said. "There were two curses on the ring. The first one fixated the person who opened the cubby in the floorboards on it, so they wouldn't stop and think about the dangers."

There was someone who could help, Harry thought. His thoughts seemed to come with great effort. He knew he should not say this to Sirius but not why. "Tell Hermione now," he managed at last. "I want to - to see her--" 

Sirius swallowed but said, "Alright." He leaned down to kiss Harry's forehead before he got up.

Harry turned his head painfully to look at the rest of the room. Merope and Dumbledore's conversation had seized, and Dumbledore was again muttering enchantments. Merope met his gaze and held it.

"Does it hurt?" Harry said, hoping it was coming out in Parseltongue. "Dying?"

"No," Merope said. She got up from her chair and crossed the little room to Harry, kneeling on the whitewashed floorboards. "The process may hurt quite a bit, depending - I died in labor and it was awful - but death doesn't hurt at all." She put a cold hand on his forehead. "Be at peace, little cousin."

"Thanks," Harry whispered, and closed his eyes.

Time passed. He wasn't aware of it. Pain was starting to bleed through the containment they had cast on his hand, in little horrible sparks of feeling. He knew that soon it would come undone and there would be nothing else.

He heard, from a distance, the door open, and Sirius's oath.

"Step aside, please," Cassiopeia Black said, voice cool. "We don't have much time. Excuse me, Madam Gaunt." 

"It's alright," Harry croaked to Sirius and Dumbledore, hoping they would not press for an explanation first; "I - know her--"

"Don't try to talk," Cassiopeia said from much nearer. When he opened his eyes, he saw her kneeling where Merope had been before. "--I promise you'll have a chance to say goodbye if I can't break it but for now it will only drain your energy." She leaned over him. Her thick braid swung over her shoulder and landed against his side, coiling like a snake. 

She examined his withered hand without touching it for a moment, two. Then she sighed. "He has the worst sense of humor."

"Does he?" Dumbledore inquired, tone pleasant, but his eyes were sharp.

"Mm." She stuck her other hand into her pocket and withdrew a felt-tipped muggle marker. "Harry, I'm afraid I need to move your hand and it may hurt."

"Go ahead," he mumbled, and winced. Lines of fire seemed to travel up his arm as she lifted it. She uncapped the marker, and the sharp smell of ink hit his face as she drew two symbols on the back of his hand: a two and a three, he thought, baffled.

There was a sudden, sharp pain at the top of the damage. Then the flesh began to smooth itself out from the top down, flesh filling out and regaining its health in a rolling movement that carried all the way down to his fingertips. The pain suddenly vanished as thoroughly as though it had never been there at all, except for his exhaustion.

The two numbers she had written were still on his hand, the two by his knuckles and the three at the edge of his wrist. Cassiopeia set it gently back on his chest, and then sat back on her heels. "You should be quite well, now, if tired. Thank you for thinking to have Sirius call Hermione, but next time you might just tell him to get me. I didn't ask you to die to preserve my secret."

"They'd just have wasted time asking me to explain," Harry said, and slowly sat up. "Er. Thank you for saving my life."

"Any time, dove." Cassiopeia turned her head to view the others and sighed again, heavily. "I suppose," she said, "Explanations are in order."

"They might be nice," Sirius said, and laughed unsteadily. "Right now I'm just grateful--" He looked down at Harry. "Thank God you're alright," he said, quietly, but heartfelt. "Thank God." Harry could see that there were tears in his eyes.

Harry felt uncomfortable for a moment, but - he had nearly died. He extended an arm to Sirius uncertainly. Sirius came over, but instead of hugging him he took Harry's hand, kissed it and pressed it to his forehead. Then, only, did he come closer and pull Harry into his arms, shaking.

"You are Cassiopeia Black, then?" Dumbledore was asking from the other side of the small room.

"Yes," Cassiopeia said, "Although the name on my legal identification has been Cassandra Wright for several decades now." She hesitated. "I gather you're familiar with the bare bones of my story from my portrait, the same as Harry?"

"Enough to recognize that as Margaret Wright's surname," Sirius said. "She lived as well?"

"Yes. Our youngest daughter died," Cassiopeia said, a tiny hitch in her voice, before she went on, "But Margaret and our older girl survived. Pollux smuggled me out of the house and lied and told your father he had killed me and dumped my body."

"Oh, _Merlin_ ," Sirius said. "I didn't _think_ killing his sister sounded like him."

"No. It wasn't." Cassiopeia was silent for a moment, staring over Sirius’s head.

"He loved you very much," she went on, finally. "We met when we could until his death, so I know rather a lot about you secondhand. When Graeme's accidental magic started, Arcturus wrote to Marius declaring his intention to take him. Pollux found out and challenged him. Arcturus won and killed him. Then I wrote and threatened to kill Arcturus if he took Graeme, which delayed him long enough that I could arrange to kill him anyway. It took me a few months to break into the house." Her voice was very flat, but more emotion returned as she said, "His was the _only_ life I've taken since 1945 - the year before my first daughter with Margaret was born - and he will be the last, but I invite any person who blames me for murdering Arcturus Black to converse with his spirit for five minutes and then judge me again."

Sirius laughed unsteadily. "No, I can't say I do," he said. "I grew up in the house with him." He paused. "I don't know if there's anything I can do for you - money, or legally..."

"There is. You can leave us alone," Cassiopeia said sharply. "I have no desire to return to dealing with the magical world on any kind of regular basis, and while intellectually I'm happy enough the House of Black isn't being turned over to the Ministry as far as I'm personally concerned I'd rather it was struck from the face of the earth."

"It would be - extremely poor repayment for me to force anything on you," Sirius said, quietly. "If that's your wish, of course I'll respect it."

Cassiopeia's face softened. Only then did Harry recognize the fear that had crept into it over the last few minutes. "I don't want my life to be public knowledge," she said, slower. "And knowing I'm still around would do you absolutely no favors with the tenants. But Lucretia has returned to the house? And Druella?"

"Yes, they're both staying in Grimmauld Place with Narcissa and her son," Sirius said. "Andromeda visits regularly, along with her husband and daughter."

"Then - if you're willing to ask them, as the Head, not to speak of my life - perhaps I will come to the house some time," Cassiopeia said uncertainly. "I miss - I need to talk to Margaret about it." She shook her head. "Oh, and the other thing. I met your foster child, Miss Hermione Granger?"

"With Harry, I suppose," Sirius said, wryly. "Yes, you mentioned she called you. What about her?"

"That girl needs to be apprenticed before she gets idly curious and rips a hole in the fabric of reality," Cassiopeia said. "Assuming she agrees, I'd prefer you send her to me. I have a personal interest in the integrity of this universe, living here as I do."

"Are you _quite_ sure that's necessary?" Dumbledore said, intruding into the conversation.

Cassiopeia blinked at him, owl-like. "Yes. I rather am. And we're discussing nothing illegal, so don't get up in arms about it."

Dumbledore looked like he wanted to argue, but saw no good in doing it. After a moment he said, "May I ask, Madam Black - you mentioned when you came in something about Voldemort's sense of humor...?"

"Oh," Cassiopeia said and relaxed again. "Yes. Harry - show him your hand? You see the two and the three? There's a pattern worked into the curse he used, a grid filled with dots. They're called magic squares, by muggles, but it's not real magic, it's just a mathematical game. You have to cast the counter to the withering curse only after completing the grid correctly for it to take. 

"As it happens I've seen him use that method before, so once I spotted it I didn't need to puzzle it out. It's rather clever; there are very few who can see magic at all, and nearly all were raised isolated in the magical world, and of course you need a passing familiarity with muggle culture to understand the hint. Exactly his style." She sighed. "He was a promising student, once."

Dumbledore looked as though he disagreed.

"Excuse me," Merope Gaunt said, making Harry jump. He had forgotten about her, hovering in the doorway uncertainly. "Did you know my son?"

"Briefly," Cassiopeia said, looking at her. "He wrote to me in school to ask after my articles and I invited him to work with me. Quite brilliant but absolutely terrible at collaboration. If you'd like me to tell you about him I will, but perhaps another day."

"Actually, I have a request as well," Merope said, glancing between the people in the room as though she could not quite decide who she was addressing. "My son brought my bones here. I was buried in a pauper's grave in London, originally. I don't want them to stay. It was bad enough being trapped here in life. Please take them away. I don't care where they go."

"I don't see any reason we can't put you in the crypt with the family if it's alright with you," Sirius said, face distracted. "Er, Aunt Cassiopeia - there isn't one, is there?"

"Not as long as she consents. The family has long buried select others. Mind, she may wander the house like this until that spell is ended."

"The crypt sounds lovely. I don't want you to keep it up," Merope said. "I had quite enough years for my taste, thank you. But if we could talk first..."

"I'll return and speak to you before ending it," Cassiopeia said.

"Good. I'm under the floorboards over there," Merope said, and pointed.

Harry started to get up, but was told by several voices to stay seated and rest while the ring was secured in a magically insulated bag, and the floorboards were opened up to unearth Merope's skeleton. Harry decided he would ask after the Black crypt another day, when he felt more up to hearing about it. Instead, Dumbledore was delegated to take Harry home so that Sirius and Cassiopeia could handle the transfer of Merope Gaunt's bones.

Back at the house he found Remus and Hermione waiting in terror. "She saved you?" Hermione asked, face white, having followed him up to his room.

"She did," Harry said quietly, propping himself up against the headboard. He felt as exhausted as though he had had six back to back Quidditch practices. "She walked in and looked at it, and said something like - he has the worst sense of humor. Then she pulled a muggle pen out of her pocket and wrote a couple numbers on my hand, and it just... Went. She said there was a puzzle, a magic square or something that you had to solve before doing the counter spell...?"

"A magic square?" Hermione said. "But that's a muggle thing!"

"Yeah, that's what she said, that you'd have to be raised around magic to see the puzzle, but you'd have to know muggle culture to actually solve it. She said it was like him," Harry said.

Hermione shook her head. "It's weird, to think she actually knew him, like a person," she said.

"I know," Harry said, but he was yawning, and knew he would have to sleep soon to recover. "Later, 'Mione," he said sleepily, and she nodded and got up to leave him alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merope is not necessarily correct about Harry's relationship to the Gaunts; she was never well educated when alive, and being dead didn't change that.
> 
> On Merope and Tom Riddle Sr., I know we are supposed to read Dumbledore's explanation of her enchanting him as canon. The problem is that in-universe I think it's flat out illogical for him to be right. Unless he's hiding a source of information from Harry, his evidence is: Merope Gaunt was unexceptional in looks and poor and had a six month marriage with the local squire's son, after which she was pregnant and destitute, pawning her jewelry to survive until dying in labor in an orphanage or workhouse in London. He returned to his parents, and the later village gossip, which Dumbledore can't have started collecting until at the earliest ten years later when Tom Riddle came to Hogwarts, and more likely several decades after that when he became politically active as Voldemort and the Riddles had been dead for decades, said he claimed that Merope "hoodwinked" him. 
> 
> "She's not pretty enough to have attracted a rich man" is... roughly the same logic Rita Skeeter uses in her article accusing _Hermione_ of using love potions. It isn't proof or even terribly suggestive evidence. There is nothing terribly exceptional about the idea that Tom Riddle Sr. had an affair with Merope, who was if nothing else something different, inexperienced and naive and obviously very infatuated, and then regretted it and left her when he realized his parents were not going to come around or the shine otherwise wore off. Maybe he even realized that she had "tricked" him by, for example, using magic to improve her appearance or seem to have money, which would not prevent him from changing his mind and leaving. 
> 
> This explanation does not require Merope to be cynical enough to drug or enchant a man into marrying her, capable of doing it with little magical education, _and_ sentimental enough to change her mind and stop in a few months while pregnant. In addition, this explanation is more consistent with what Voldemort tells Harry in GoF (that his mother was a witch who fell in love with a muggle from the local village, and he left her when he found out what she was, because he didn't like magic). Granted that both Dumbledore and Voldemort are canonical liars, I think it makes more sense for Voldemort to be telling the truth in this specific case: the story he gives Harry does not make him look better or seem particularly appealing for his self-image, and he is apparently unburdening himself before killing an enemy he partially identifies with, whereas Dumbledore has reasons to try to limit Harry's sympathy for Merope and her son and may be inclined to suspect the worst by default of Voldemort's mother.
> 
> [Magic squares](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_square), if you're curious.
> 
> [Find this update](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/643080961207238656/the-glass-fortress-chpt-24-gaunt-and-lingering) and me on tumblr!


	26. St. Mungo's

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The description of St. Mungo's in this chapter owes a lot to chapter twenty-two of OotP.

Sirius was pale and strained, and all of the adults seemed to feel a need to check on Harry frequently for the rest of the break. He was exhausted for several days after the curse’s removal himself, and trying not to dwell on Merope’s suggestion that his mother, and therefore he, might be distant relations of Voldemort. 

Harry filled his time inside flipping through the journals Hermione had found of his mother’s, as though they might offer him either comfort or clues. They were not easy to read. His mother had been no organized diary keeper, but alternated between journal entries, context-less lists and obscure notes, some in pencil or ink that was long-faded. He would have asked Hermione for help finding a spell that would restore it, but she was often out of the house visiting Cassiopeia, and returned late in the day, looking very thoughtful and tired herself. Since Harry could not take the journals to school - that much was obvious the first time he came across notes from a magical experiment - he would have to make a more prolonged attempt to decipher them over the summer.

Harry was not the only one stuck inside unless an escort was available, of course. Sirius was both drinking a lot at night and making frequent use of the Sober Up Charm afterwards. He had never handled confinement well. Andromeda and Narcissa were both over more often, apparently out of worry. Sirius was less inclined to snap at his cousins for hovering than any of the other adults.

Harry's scar continued to prickle, but nothing new happened until the third of January, nearly a week after his vision at the Boneses’. Sirius and Remus had made time to take him and Hermione out for lunch in muggle London, and Remus and Hermione were having a friendly argument about a book they had both read about muggle ethics.

"Harry," Sirius said, appearing to give up on following it, "I wanted to talk to you, while you're still home, about something we discussed briefly by letter last term. Do you remember when you asked about Dumbledore's opinion of my ethics?"

"What?" Harry said. The argument over his custody and the nobility now seemed to have taken place a very long time ago. "You mean about Marxism?"

Sirius's lips quirked. "Well, that's part of it, but maybe not the most important one. I talked to Aunt Cassie a couple of times this week about how things are going with the family--"

"I hope it wasn't terrible," Harry said, seeing Sirius looking faintly apprehensive at the memory.

"She has some very strong opinions," Sirius allowed. "I don't mind it. If anything it's a relief, because she and Marius are willing to push me the way I actually want to go, which makes it easier to stand up against, say, Lucretia and to a lesser extent Druella. For example, Kreacher is free now."

"Really?" Harry asked, startled. "I thought you said it would upset him?"

"Well, I assumed it would," Sirius said, carefully. "And he was pretty rattled, but Marius apparently has a lot of connections I hadn't realized. He was able to contact the free house elf union and have someone from there come and talk to Kreacher about accepting an employment contract instead, and once he was reassured we couldn’t suddenly throw him out of the house his ancestors have lived in for years under the contract, he saw things differently."

"Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?" Harry asked quietly.

"In a way," Sirius said. "I know that Dumbledore questioned why I hadn't made agreements to sell land to its owners, or something of the kind. You can probably guess we've come to terms to work together based on the last couple of weeks, but I wanted to tell you a few things about my plans. The thing is - since you're muggle raised, and I do know you care about fairness, I doubt I have to make a big case to you about why it's not fair for a few families to own all of the land and the courts?"

"Of course not!" Harry said. "That's half of the _trouble_ , people like Malfoy buying off committees."

"Malfoy is actually not a Wizengamot House," Sirius said ruefully. "Although they're vassals of the Lestranges, and the Lestranges are in prison. Abraxas was appointed to administrate the vacant seat until his death, which is part of how Lucius has had so much free reign to cause trouble. Thanks to him opening the Chamber of Secrets the Wizengamot wouldn’t confirm him to it after Abraxas died, even if they also wouldn’t convict him of attempted murder. But that's a long, complicated story. What I wanted to get at, Harry, is what I'm planning to do. There are really a few sides to it. There are the courts and local government, and there's the Wizengamot seat, and there's the control of the land and all of the services and duties that go with it.

"And the problem with selling off or deeding land to petty farmers, aside from it not always being legally possible without Wizengamot consent, is that once we don't have a connection anymore, they don't have any sort of protection. If there's a drought right now I have an obligation to make sure people don't starve, but if not they might have to sell their land to survive - and if someone like me, or _not_ me, maybe the Malfoys or the Notts, buys it up, they still own the land and they don't have any of my traditional responsibilities."

"That makes sense," Harry said, slowly. "But it does seem sort of like..." He remembered Dumbledore calling it an excuse and did not want to repeat it.

"I know," Sirius said. "I'm not content to leave things as they are, and that's part of what I told Dumbledore. It's just that I don't think individual land grants are the right solution. We need to make sure land reform happens in a way that doesn't leave people without a social network or fallback for disasters, and we need to do it together, and we need to make control of the local courts part of that. So, step one is getting someone reasonable into the Minister's position..."

"Ouch!" Harry exclaimed. His scar, which had been aching throughout the meal again, had suddenly twinged violently, matched with a feeling of rage. "Sorry," he said hastily, concentrating on flight, trying to contain his mind within his body, when he was interrupted again.

The door to the restaurant banged open. They all looked up, reaching towards their wands, but it was only Narcissa, wide eyed and pale. It was the first time Harry could recall seeing her in muggle clothing since the Quidditch World Cup. She was wearing gray slacks this time and a silk blouse, and looked every bit as suited here as anywhere else. "I see my party," she said to the hostess and went over, quickly.

"What's wrong?" Sirius asked, already rising.

"It's Andy," Narcissa said. "We got an owl from St. Mungo's saying she's been hospitalized, some kind of accident, they were asking for you as her Head - If it was an attack-"

"Damn it." Sirius shot to his feet. "Remus, sort out the bill. Harry, Hermione-"

"We're coming," Harry said, grabbing his coat. Hermione nodded quickly beside him, hair bouncing. "We want to see her."

"They might not let everyone in," Sirius said, but did not protest them following him and Narcissa back out. "Hermione, is it alright if Cissy takes you--?"

"That's fine," Hermione said rapidly, gripping Narcissa's arm when it was offered. The four of them dodged around the side of the restaurant away from sight of the street. Then Sirius took Harry's arm as well, and they Disapparated.

They arrived in a crowded reception room, filled with many people sitting in rows. The Healers wore lime green robes and traveled around the room asking questions. Harry had just enough time to register that while many people looked perfectly normal, many emergency magical maladies were extremely eye catching, such as a woman who was messily weeping a substance that looked and smelled strongly of molasses into a bucket, before Sirius strode off to the queue at a desk marked INQUIRIES. There were three or four people standing there, but several of them jumped out of his way immediately, eyes darting to his face, or to Narcissa striding behind him, jaw clenched. 

Sirius did not reassure them, but he also did not demand precedence. He stopped behind the final party in line, who had not made way, and waited patiently for the red-haired witch behind the counter to have a moment free to say, "We're here for Andromeda Black, she was just admitted and they called for me."

"Madam Black would be Fourth Floor," the witch said, "Spell Damage, the emergency wing." Glancing at the floor guide behind her, Harry found and read: "SPELL DAMAGE... Fourth Floor (Unliftable jinxes, hexes, and incorrectly applied charms, etc.)"

They went through the double doors, down a narrow corridor lined with portraits of famous Healers and lit with floating crystal bubbles full of candles, and climbed several flights of steps. Several portraits called out to them or muttered to each other as they passed, but Sirius ignored them, striding furiously upward. Harry was panting and struggling to keep up by the time they reached the fourth floor landing, and went through a door marked _Spell Damage_.

"The emergency wing's this way," Sirius said, abruptly slowing as if he had just remembered they were following him. "It's one of the larger wards - expanded in the seventies, so it's newer..."

"Here," Narcissa said tersely. She reached the door ahead of him and threw it open. 

The room inside was dark and wood paneled like the waiting room, but the floor and walls were newer and less dingy. There was a second receptionist here, and a long line of chairs with only a handful of people in them. The room had been sized, Harry supposed uneasily, for a war that brought in many cursed people at once. Sirius approached the desk more calmly and said, "We're here for Andromeda Black."

"Mr. Black," said the wizard behind the desk, inclining his head. "I'll let them know you're here - the Healer wanted to speak to you, I believe..."

Then there was nothing to do but take wooden seats, less rickety than the ones downstairs but probably no more comfortable, and wait.

A Healer in a lime green robe came out a minute or two later. Up close, Harry saw an emblem of a bone crossed with a wand embroidered on her robes. Sirius got up and went with her to consult in private. For a moment Narcissa looked ready to tear his head off for being excluded, but he turned and murmured, "I'll tell you as soon as I can, Cissy," and she subsided. It occurred to Harry for the first time, able to think, that Ted had not been called, or Tonks. He was about to ask whether Ted even knew his wife was in hospital when they returned.

"She's not awake yet," Sirius said, and pushed his hair back from his face. "They wanted approval to use the antidote indicated on an unconscious witch because it can cause miscarriage," he added to Harry and Hermione. "I told them I'd rather Andy was alive and I'm quite sure she and Ted feel the same way. She should be up pretty soon now that they're allowed to do more than keep her stable. Apparently she was brought in by a bystander who said he didn't see the attacker."

"Damn it," Narcissa said, looking pale. "I didn't think Bella would really... And _Andy_..."

"I know," Sirius said grimly. "I suppose the bystander showing up surprised whoever it was, if they left her alive and incapacitated. I doubt it was Bella herself, she'd have only murdered anyone who walked in on it, too."

Narcissa did not argue this statement. "Possibly Barty, he was very young at the end of the war," she said, lips tight.

"Has anyone contacted Ted?" Hermione asked, but then the door swung open and they all looked up. A new Healer beckoned to them, and they stood as a group, Narcissa and Sirius in the lead and Harry and Hermione at their heels. The Healer led them down a narrow corridor lit by more floating bubbles and opened the fourth door. Sirius stepped inside first, and then stopped very shortly. He made a sort of strangled noise in his throat, then said, "Could we have a few minutes in private...?"

"Of course, Lord Black," the Healer said. "Just call us if she needs anything, or if anything changes."

"What is it?" Narcissa said anxiously, trying to look over Sirius's shoulder. Sirius was silent as the Healer retreated, and only when he was out of earshot said, quietly, "Hello, Bella."

Harry stopped short, and Hermione gasped softly beside him.

Well, Harry thought, it was probably just as well no one had gone to get Ted, then.

"Sirius, move," Narcissa said, voice strained. Sirius glanced at her, and then stepped aside to let her through, and Harry could see through the door.

Seeing Bellatrix in a well lit room, it was immediately obvious that it was her, but Harry supposed that the Healers were not familiar with Andromeda. Bellatrix was also obviously injured, or had gone to great lengths to fake it. She lay in the hospital bed, face and lips very pale. Angry red lines like burns or welts wrapped around her exposed hands and wrists, and lashed across her face twice. The magic on her, when Harry checked it, seethed with malice. 

"In or out, we'd better shut the door," Sirius said to him and Hermione. Harry cautiously stepped just inside the door along with Hermione before Sirius shut it and cast a spell to muffle sound.

"You complete, utter _cunt_ ," Narcissa said calmly, walking to the bed. 

Harry blinked.

"I didn't give them Andy's name," Bellatrix said. She did not look or sound surprised, and she did not lift her head. Her voice was still faintly hoarse, but she sounded more human than she had last spring, when Harry had mistaken it for smoke damage from the fire. Underneath the marks of whatever curse had been used on her, she looked better as well. Her face had filled out and her hair was glossy again, the same way that Sirius had recovered after Azkaban. "I was unconscious when Barty dragged me in here." She paused. "The idiot. Or is this about your real parents?"

"My real--" Narcissa's lips went white, and she said, "You _knew_?"

"Since 1974, yes. I went to their house to ensure no one could use their blood against our family and met your mother. I'm sure you've noticed the resemblance," Bellatrix said dryly.

"And you didn't think to mention this at some point? When I--" Narcissa looked at Sirius and cut herself off.

"I didn't think you'd take it well."

Sirius pinched the bridge of his nose. "Bella," he said, before Narcissa could respond. "Who cursed you?"

Bellatrix stared back at him with flat eyes and pressed her lips together. Sirius seemed to take this as an answer. He said, "I heard you refused to kill me."

"Then you're more of an idiot than Barty for staying here after seeing my face," Bellatrix muttered. She began to move, and Harry tensed, Sirius moving subtly in front of him. But she only pushed herself up on her elbows, at great length, so that she could sit against the wall behind the hospital bed. "Look," she said, not meeting Sirius's eyes, "I'm fine. Everything is under control. Thank you for giving them permission to save me, now either call the Aurors or leave."

"Under control," Sirius repeated.

"It isn't as though he just cursed me out of the blue," Bellatrix said irritably. "We were dueling and I lost."

Harry glanced at Hermione, who looked as appalled as him. Harry was starting to feel as though he had walked in on a private conversation he should in no way be hearing, for all his fear that this was a trap.

"You _dueled_ him?" Narcissa said. "And you called Sirius an idiot?"

"I didn't say I was smarter. I assume Barty panicked."

"Bella," Sirius said. She looked up at his voice and they stared at each other a minute before Sirius said, "Come home."

Bellatrix's lips parted, but she said nothing.

After a moment Sirius went on, "The House isn't like before. I _know_ why you joined him, but - things have changed. Come home. You can have your sisters back, your _mother_ is with us. He's been hurting you for almost thirty years. You don’t have to be his tool anymore."

"You realize it will be the Kiss this time, not Azkaban."

"I'm not talking about the fucking _Ministry_ ," Sirius said. "I'm Lord Black. They won't burst into the house, they won't dare, and Grimmauld Place could withstand a siege, and - all right, I can’t put you in the same house as Harry, but there are other fortress properties. We can protect you from him _and_ the Ministry. Leave him and come home."

"Sirius," she said, and stopped again.

"I'm begging you," Sirius said. He moved from the doorway then, approached the bed in a few swift strides, and dropped to his knees by it. Harry's sense that they were intruding grew stronger still, as Sirius took Bellatrix's hand and kissed it, then pressed it to his forehead. " _Please_ , Bella. Come home." Narcissa watched from a few feet away, with a fixed, longing expression.

"Siri..." Bellatrix said, softer. She turned her hand to cup his cheek. "My lion cub."

"Please, Bella."

"Take care of the house," Bellatrix said, and closed her eyes. "I've taken my vows and I will not forswear them. Go home, little lion cub, and forget me."

"I can't," Sirius said, voice cracking, and, "I love you." 

Bellatrix didn't speak again until they left.

"We're not going to call the Aurors," Hermione said, half a statement and half a question, when they emerged from the room.

Sirius let out a breath and looked at her. "If I thought they would manage to take her into custody, I would be seriously torn, but right now, blowing her cover is the one thing that is guaranteed to escalate the situation and kill twenty or thirty people. And I doubt they would hold her, since St. Mungo's isn't warded against internal Apparition. You know how they got her last time?"

"How?" Harry asked.

"It was actually the second time she was taken in for questioning. They arrested her when they arrested me. Everyone knew we'd been engaged, and since she was associated with Voldemort socially, when they thought I'd turned they assumed she'd recruited me. They couldn't pin anything on her, though, and while _I_ was a disowned pariah, she had her husband, the Earl of St. Mary, pounding on MLE's doors demanding to know what the hell they thought they were doing, so they had to let her go after a couple of days. 

"Crouch is - was - smarter than you might think from what you've heard. The Longbottoms' testimony was initially thrown out on grounds of incapacity, and it took weeks of their former colleagues arguing to get the ruling reversed, so by the time the arrest warrant came through Bellatrix and the Lestranges thought they'd gotten away with it. Crouch sent some junior Auror around with a summons, had him put it to them as a request, like it was just a formality, checking a few details. They thought refusing would be suspicious, so they went. He didn't break it that they were under arrest until they were actually in MLE with about a hundred Aurors around, and he'd called in a detachment of dementors to guard the cells. And despite that, Bellatrix still killed at least one Auror in MLE during interrogation. Maybe a better man would have killed her in that bed while she was struggling to sit up, but I'm not ashamed to say I couldn't do it." Sirius wasn't looking at him.

Harry swallowed, trying to come up with a response. Before he had managed it, Narcissa said, "I didn't know any of that. Did Amelia tell you?"

Sirius shook his head. "Bella did, in prison," he said shortly. “It’s why I don’t know how many people she killed in MLE. She was only sure of the one fatality.”

"He may kill her, when she goes back," Narcissa said conversationally.

"He may," Sirius said. "I don't think there's anything I can do about that if she insists on going. Narcissa, nothing's changed. I don't know what she told you, but a couple of times when I was a teenager she came home at night with severe Cruciatus shakes. I can't _make_ her stay angry with him for hurting her. The only person who can choose whether she forgives him or not is Bella."

When they returned home, they found Andromeda, Ted and Tonks waiting in their kitchen. Tonks was pacing across the sitting room, while Ted read the newspaper and Andromeda sat, rigidly, hand locked around a mug she wasn't drinking from.

"You're okay!" Tonks said, looking relieved. "Remus came and found us with Mum here and I was frantic, but she wouldn't let me call anyone--"

"Cornering Bellatrix is as good as cornering an actual dementor," Andromeda said, jaw tense. "It won't do any good, and having _me_ walk in would only make her panic and escalate the situation. Is everyone else alright, Sirius?"

"Voldemort used the Fire Ribbon Curse on her," Sirius said shortly, and Andromeda and Tonks both winced. "The Healers got it in time, she said Barty Crouch Jr. dumped her there when she was unconscious, and he was the one who gave the Healers your name. She was unconscious when we arrived and behaving when we left. I asked her to come home and she refused. I thought calling in the Aurors was a good way of getting the hospital burnt down with a bunch of innocent people inside, so I didn't."

"God damn you, Bella," Andromeda said, sounding not so much angry and not at all surprised, but very, very tired.

"Are you okay, Hermione?" Harry asked her quietly on the edge of the room. He realized then that aside from asking about the Aurors, she had been very quiet.

Hermione nodded and gestured for him to follow her upstairs. They went into her room, where she sat on the bed and wrapped her arms around herself. "I suppose she didn't seem real to me, before," Hermione said without prompting when Harry had shut her bedroom door. "I was picturing, you know, a sort of monster, or story character... And I didn't expect the first time I saw her to be in a hospital bed like that." She glanced at Harry. "Is Sirius in love with her, you think?"

"He definitely loves her, but I don't think it's like that," Harry said. He had never told his friends about the affair, and didn't particularly want to now. "She raised him, Bellatrix and Andromeda, because their parents weren't very involved, and she tried to protect him from them. She joined Voldemort because his father was going to kill her for Andromeda running away, they all thought Bella had helped, and once she was a Death Eater Voldemort wouldn't let them."

"And that's probably how he got her to sleep with him, too," Hermione said, lip curling. "I'd wondered about that. It's really horrible, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Harry said. "It is."

They were subdued the last few days of the Christmas holidays. The night immediately after they had run across Bellatrix in the hospital, Sirius got extremely drunk and locked himself in the basement overnight, although at least Remus was able to check on him this time. Harry was unable to decide how he felt about it himself, and Hermione seemed no more certain, so they tried to avoid discussing it. Instead they speculated about what having more teachers would be like and their encounters with classmates over the break. They avoided, too, the subject of Ron. Hermione returned from Cassiopeia’s house late in the week with an armload of books that were legal to take to school, and on the last night of the holidays, they had family dinner at Grimmauld Place again. This time, Cassiopeia came.

She arrived late, after everyone else was there. After a few weeks at home Harry was less anxious about the family, and it was generally much less formal. The dining room had been set with several long tables instead of the immense round one, and people were clumped in small groups around them. The door opened, and Harry noticed but didn't look up, until he heard Sirius say, "Cassiopeia. I'm glad you made it."

Silence fell.

Cassie stood in the doorway with Margaret a few steps behind her, face very blank, but at Sirius's words she smiled slightly. She looked a bit nauseous. She was wearing another loose, flowery skirt, like in the bookstore. "Thank you for having us," she said, and skimmed the room. "Marius."

"Cassie." Marius rose and went to her first, relief in his face, and they embraced. He nearly lifted her off her feet. "When Poll gave us the aging formula I suspected--"

"Mm." Cassiopeia buried her face in his neck for a moment. "I'm alright," she said, and then softer, "I'm fine." 

"Aunt Cassie?" Narcissa said, eyes wide, but it was Lucretia who went to her feet next.

"Aunt Cassiopeia," she said herself, and hugged her when she was out of Marius's arms. "Oh, Morgana - what are you _wearing_?"

"Clothing, it prevents nakedness," Cassiopeia said tartly, but hugged her as well. "This is Margaret, everyone," she said, looking uncertainly over the room. "My wife."

"A pleasure to meet you," Marius said, recovering first of the people who hadn't known already. "I'm Cassiopeia's younger brother, Marius Black."

"I've heard about you," Margaret said, shaking his hand, before she moved to join Cassie, wrapping an arm around her. "Alright, love?" she said quietly.

"Yes, I'm fine." Cassiopeia swept the room with her gaze again. She said, uncertainly, "It's good to be home."

Not since his first year had Harry prepared to go to Hogwarts without Ron, and he felt a distinct ache over the lack of his best friend as he tried to force his trunk shut on piles of clothing and schoolbooks the next morning. Hermione and Draco were quite as capable of causing chaos, but it wasn't the same. Both of them were occupied foremost by tracking down books and forcing their other possessions into the smallest amount of space possible. Hermione was particularly frustrated, having just received an additional box's worth from Cassiopeia.

They were again escorted to the train in a large, security-conscious group. Draco excused himself at once to go find Daphne and Tracey, saying also that he wanted to see if he could catch Pansy alone and find out how Hannah's holiday had been. Harry and Hermione went to look for a compartment with empty seats. "Do you think if we found Ron..." Harry began hesitantly.

" _You_ can," Hermione said, scowling.

Harry carefully did not sigh. "He'll figure out he's being an idiot sooner or later," he said, and did not bring up Ron again. They found an empty compartment near the end, heaved their trunks into the racks and released Crookshanks to curl up in an empty seat. They were speculating on whether Binns's replacement would be an improvement when the door opened. Harry looked up, hoping for either Ron come to apologize or Cho, but in fact it was Neville.

"Hi," he said nervously. "Er, can I come sit?"

"Sure," Harry said, moving his bag off the seat next to him. "How was your Christmas?"

"Good - really good!" Neville said, beaming at them. "How was yours?"

"Good," Harry said, while Hermione nodded behind him. Somehow, _We destroyed a piece of Voldemort's soul and saw Bellatrix Lestrange in hospital_ did not seem like appropriate small talk material, even before he considered the audience. "Hermione stayed with us. What happened?" he asked, as Neville was so obviously bursting to talk.

"Well - you remember what I said last year, after - the escape?" Neville said.

Harry blinked, astonished both that Neville was mentioning it in front of Hermione and that he appeared to be happy about something related to this. "Yes," he said cautiously.

"My parents have been released!" Neville said. "--Er, they're still ill, I mean, but they've been allowed to go home with my great uncle Niall - he's my mother's uncle, and I've been to visit a few times over holidays."

"That's great," Harry said, and tried to figure out a tactful way of asking if they now recognized him.

Neville seemed to guess. His smile turned rueful. "They still haven't said anything," he admitted. "Nothing that makes sense, anyway. But Mum gets up when Uncle Niall tells her I'm here, he said, so she knows who I am, and she's been giving me stuff that makes _sense_ now that she has it, you know, flowers from the garden and things. Dad's not doing so different," he admitted, "But he _looks_ alive, and he didn't before. They're hoping they'll get better with more people around, and being at home."

Hermione was watching Neville with a careful face. Harry knew she was trying to hide how stricken she was, not having known about this situation in the first place. Hastily, before she said something tactless trying to help, he said, "I'm really glad, Neville, I hope they do get better."

"Maybe," Neville said; then he dropped his voice, although they were alone. "The Wizengamot finally heard the custody case and there was a court order, that if Uncle Algie wasn't going to make provisions for them to be cared for by family Mum's relatives could be allowed care decisions. Of course it's political," and here he made a face. "Madam Bones is afraid that - you know she's planning to reopen cases from the war to examine the evidence, because of Crouch having people like your godfather locked up without it?"

"We heard," Hermione said anxiously. "Who was - a Death Eater attacked them?"

"It was Bellatrix Lestrange," Neville said. Hermione looked appalled, and Harry knew she was thinking of when they had seen her over the break and walked away. "And her husband and brother-in-law, and Crouch's son, too, who they found out was still alive last spring. The trouble is--" Neville hesitated. "So, they're down as having confessed in the records, even though they were arrested based on my parents' word, because my parents weren't very - they were still capable of talking, a little, before they spent _fourteen years_ locked up in a closed ward, but they were already very badly off and it took ages to get the warrant based on it. Nobody thought a jury would convict. And the court had thrown out all Veritaserum evidence by then. The problem is that you can’t identify real Veritaserum after the fact, it’s indistinguishable from water, so there were a bunch of scandals over tainted evidence when Death Eaters in the Ministry swapped it out..."

"Crouch tortured them to get the confession, didn't he," Hermione said flatly.

Neville swallowed and nodded. "It was really bad," he said softly. "I haven't seen the transcripts, but Madam Bones came and talked to me about it so I'd understand, you know, why she'd decided to risk them being exonerated on retrial. It was _really_ bad, and if we make excuses for it once, then MLE can do it as many times as they like, right, because there's precedent? And they can do it under any circumstances they want - some of the people working _against_ Voldemort were tortured into confessions too, especially under Fudge’s administration after the war." Recovering himself, he said, "So - she's hoping that if my parents do better they'll be able to testify again, and she convinced the Wizengamot to overrule Uncle Algie having them hospitalized permanently."

"I hope so, and not just because of the trial," Harry said, and Neville grinned at him again. He seemed to be bouncing between anxiety, horror at the prospect of the Lestranges, and giddiness at his parents' freedom.

The holiday train arrived just before dinner, the same time as the usual start of term one. But as dinner on normal days was a casual affair without a designated starting time, they were permitted to go up and unpack first. Harry and Neville said hello to Seamus and Dean, who he hadn't seen on the train, and asked after each other's holidays before coming back down. On entrance to the Great Hall, Harry was startled to see that it had been rearranged. There were now three separate staff tables, somewhat smaller than the House ones but still long and thin, perpendicular to the student tables at the head of the room. They were half full of many adults, some the teachers he knew but some totally unfamiliar. These were the new staff. Skimming them, he spotted Sotero Lestrange near one end. Sotero glanced up and met Harry's eyes, then grinned and waved at him and Hermione.

"Who's that?" Neville asked, sitting down.

Oh, no, Harry thought. "The new Arithmancy TA," he said, "We met him over the holidays." Neville, who after all was not taking Arithmancy, nodded with disinterest, while Harry hoped frantically that he would not actually hear Sotero's surname.

Hermione was staring, fixed, at the staff table when he looked over at her. "What's wrong?" Harry asked.

"Nothing!" Hermione said, then before he could argue said, "Look, that's Rachel, on the end!"

Harry looked, and blinked. He had not noticed her, having only meant her once last summer, but undeniably the young woman sitting to the left of the second table was Hermione's older cousin Rachel Granger. She was wearing lightweight paisley blue robes and looking around, grinning. Harry had a flash of memory of how impressive the Great Hall had been his first day at Hogwarts.

"How'd they get her into the castle?" Harry said.

"There are anti-muggle-repelling enchantments, we used them in Diagon Alley when I went with--" Hermione broke off, swallowed, and said in a small voice, "My parents. Anyway, this must be what Sirius meant about me having something to look forward to in his letter last term! But what on earth was she hired for?"

"Muggle Studies?" Harry said, shrugging.

"I suppose," Hermione said, leaning towards the staff table eagerly as though she could bridge the gap by will. "I never get to see her normally, I hope she has time to talk later..."

About a half hour into his meal, as Harry was spooning more potatoes onto his plate and trying not to look at Ron half the table over, Dumbledore rose to his feet, and the lights flickered off for a moment. Silence came quickly. Dumbledore had immediate command over the hall.

"Welcome back, to those of you who have been away, and welcome to dinner, to those of you who have not," Dumbledore said. "Forgive me for interrupting your eagerly-awaited supper, but there are a few announcements I must make at the start of spring term this year." He paused.

"First, as many of you no doubt have ascertained from the papers, the Ministry has recently passed a bill granting itself greater powers over institutional libraries such as our own, as well as clarifying the matter of restricted subjects in research publications. Our esteemed guests last term examined the library in order to aid this process. Regretfully," and he paused and gave them a sorrowful look, making Harry stuff his sleeve into his mouth to prevent laughter, "Before these recommendations could be implemented, person or persons unknown absconded with many of the volumes to be removed, including nearly the entire Restricted Section."

He paused again, and laughter rippled across the hall. While he sounded and looked genuinely regretful, Harry was certain that not a student present doubted he would have been able to prevent a theft of half the library if he had tried.

"Any information on this subject should be brought to me, with great haste," he continued, regarding them all affably. "Madam Dolores Umbridge, who you will recall, urges you to write to her, but I am certain that none of us would want to waste the Senior Undersecretary's important and no doubt very limited time." He had to pause again for laughter.

"Additionally, the Ministry has expressed an interest in student behavior. At their request, we have implemented an earlier curfew for all students who are not of age." Dumbledore had to halt again for grumbling to die down before he went on, "Students in first and second year will have no change. Students fifth year and under will have a curfew of nine o'clock, and N.E.WT. students below the age of seventeen, ten-thirty. Students who are of age will have no change. Your Prefects and professors are charged with enforcing this matter. As there is considerably more staff available for supervision now, I would urge some of you to pay a bit more heed to the clock.

"On a more pleasant matter," he continued, "In addition to our returning students, I would like to welcome some twenty-four new staff members, as well as announcing that while Professor Binns will remain resident in the castle, he will be counted merely - but not insignificantly - as one of the castle's compliment of ghosts. A round of applause and our best wishes for him," Dumbledore said amiably as students began to spontaneously cheer this news. Harry, applauding with the rest, reflected that he would wish Binns any best that meant Harry never again had to hear him lecture. 

"Your schedules have been amended with new times and room numbers. Some may be the same, but in some cases it has been necessary to move classes to allow them to be taught by separate teachers simultaneously. Some schedule changes have also been necessary. I regret that a few of you will have fewer free periods in the day, but as classes will begin and end at more uniform times, you should have more time before and after to make up for it.

"Now," he continued, "Allow me to introduce - please wave, stand or indicate yourself as I say your name - additional Charms Professor Sturdevant," an elderly woman lifted a hand, "Professor Parkinson - Teaching Assistant Harkiss - Transfiguration Professor Crabbe, Professor Longbottom, Assistant Burke--"

There were many new teachers, and Harry almost immediately lost track of the names, although he tried to pay attention. Fortunately, Neville also quickly lost interest. Two new names, however, caught Harry’s attention. One was a new History professor, Professor Weasley: a slight, older woman with long and very dark red hair. The other was the new Defense professor, a young woman the same age as most of the assistants with curly black hair and a friendly smile who had been identified as Professor Selwyn.

Rachel Granger was indeed introduced as the new Muggle Studies Teaching Assistant. No one among the students so much as blinked at her name passing. Very shortly, Harry was trying to find Parvati to get the password from her before Ron and Hermione had to speak, and had another chance to start a fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Ministry demanding a change in curfew time is how I'm resolving the discrepency between the OotP curfew and sunset times in Scotland when the trio are out of Gryffindor in the summer in previous books.
> 
> Liked this? [Find it](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/643768372565245952/the-glass-fortress-chpt-25-st-mungos) on tumblr, along with updates on my other projects.


	27. The Ministry Yule Ball of 1973

They had not been told which classes would have new professors, and on Monday morning the tables were buzzing with speculation. The Gryffindor fifth years now had Potions first thing Mondays instead of second, largely to their displeasure.

"But maybe we won't have Snape!" Ron said, in an almost friendly way in Harry's direction.

"Yeah, maybe," Harry said hopefully, "The other two look all right--"

Hermione gave an angry sniff and got up with a loud clatter. "I'm going to get started downstairs to see," she said, pointedly looking at Harry.

"See you," Harry said to Ron hopefully, but went after her.

Unfortunately when they reached the Potions classroom in the dungeons, Snape was in evidence at the head of the room as usual. However, he was not alone: Teaching Assistant Burke was also present, straightening the student supply cabinet. Getting out his book and Potions kit, Harry examined her curiously. With her back turned, all he could see was that she had brown hair in a pinned up braid, and was wearing navy robes.

"Good morning," Snape drawled when the last student had entered the room. He dropped the textbook he had been perusing on his desk with a bang that made several people jump, his assistant included. She rose quickly, blushing slightly, and turned to face them. "Allow me to introduce you all to your new Teaching Assistant, Miss Josephine Burke. She will be assisting me in class supervision with fourth and fifth year, as there are too many of you for one teacher to adequately contain the stupidity of, and the Potions you use in these years are more dangerous than those in your first three years of schooling. 

"As you are woefully unfamiliar with normal staffing, and this is your first class, I will tell you once: you will address her as 'Assistant Burke' or 'Miss Burke.' You will accord her the same respect - I would say obedience except that few of you actually do - that you give me, whether or not I am watching, is that not correct, Miss Parkinson?"

Pansy jumped and shoved a magazine she had been reading under the desk into her bag. Snape nodded once, sharply. Harry reflected that even if Snape had been more civil lately, there was absolutely no chance that a Gryffindor caught reading in his class would not have lost points.

"Now," Snape said after a moment, "You will proceed in your textbooks to page ninety-eight and begin." The usual piece of chalk rose and began to write instructions on the board. "Miss Burke will be circulating throughout the classroom to assist you in brewing and so that you may introduce yourselves to her." 

He paused and for a moment Harry thought that his speech was over; then he went on, "This potion uses the finer aspects of ingredient preparation we discussed in your last class before the break. If you do not remember something or are not certain, please ask either Miss Burke or me before implementing it to catastrophic failure. We will review your performance in a discussion next class. Begin."

"Right," Hermione said, flipping their textbook open at once, "I did some reading about Visionary Potions over break--" 

They worked through the period. Hermione was a meticulous Potions maker and often prevented Harry from making the sort of short cut he had learned to use whenever he could in Aunt Petunia's kitchen to avoid her wrath by running late. Their results were generally good, even if he didn't always understand _why_ Hermione’s corrections had mattered. They were sitting on the opposite side of the classroom from where Miss Burke had begun, and she stopped for nearly fifteen minutes with Neville, who had been near tears when she reached his desk. Keeping an eye on them as he sliced, Harry decided that she seemed to be handling Neville well. Still, the result was that they had only a minute or two to introduce themselves before the bell rang. 

Harry remembered, vaguely, that Pansy’s aunt Christina Parkinson had had children who were Burkes and one of them had taken a position at Hogwarts, so he supposed Miss Burke was probably Pansy’s cousin. But he had missed what they said to each other, if anything.

Their second class on Monday mornings was now Defense. After this Harry - and presumably Ron - would be free for the entire afternoon while Hermione was in Ancient Runes and some of their other classmates were in Divination, now for a double period, although their Mondays would still end a full hour before they had in December. The Gryffindors hurried upstairs in a group during break. Neville was too embarrassed to say much about his opinion of Assistant Burke, but Parvati and Dean were both approving. Ron did not volunteer an opinion. He kept shooting looks at Harry and Hermione, while Hermione pretended furiously not to see.

When they arrived in the Defense classroom, they were again confronted with two teachers. Professor Selwyn was seated on the corner of the desk Professor Moody sat behind, talking to him about, as far as Harry could hear, the grading schedule. Up close, he could see that she dressed a bit like Amelia Bones, or how Tonks's girlfriend Evelyn Shacklebolt did when wearing magical clothing, in open-fronted robes short enough to expose tall boots, although Professor Selwyn's were cracked and mud stained. 

"Alright," Moody said when the last student had filed in and shut the door. "It's good to see you all made it back from Christmas alive." A few uncertain snickers rose. Moody gave no hint as to whether he was joking, only swept the room with his eyes, mundane and magical - the magical one continued spinning when it got to the far end of the room into the back of his head and back around - and nodded once.

"This is Professor Svemila Selwyn. Now, some of you've had some encounters with her family," Moody said, not looking specifically at Harry, "So I'd like to tell you all that she has my confidence as a professor. The Board wanted to hire two new Defense teachers and a TA like the other subjects, but they couldn't find enough applicants for the job. Two teachers isn't enough to split everyone up, especially since my colleague here's fairly young. So instead she's going to take one period a week for each class and work on practice with you." He looked at Selwyn here, who seemed to take this as a cue and straightened.

"Hello, everyone," she said, glancing across the room herself. "Like Professor Moody said, I was hired on as Junior Defense Professor, but because of the scheduling constraints I'm going to be taking a period a week instead of taking over any classes completely. I'm also going to do a lot of your grading. 

"I know I'm only a few years older than all of you - I graduated Hogwarts spring of 1992, so my last year was your first - but I've spent the last few years traveling and getting experience. I portkeyed back to Britain from Anatolia. I _also_ know you had a bad experience with a Defense teacher who'd been traveling in the same general area, so I'd just like to assure all of you that I do not have Lord Voldemort on the back of my head." She raked her fingers through her loose hair as though to demonstrate this. 

A mix of gasps and laughter erupted from the class. Harry was one of those who clapped a hand over his mouth to muffle snickering. Selwyn grinned at that and sat down properly in a chair.

"Now that we've got that established," Moody said, "I'd like to review some of the dueling spells we learned last term, so everyone partner up..."

Charms and Transfiguration on Tuesday morning were more or less as always, with no additional teachers. Evidently Professor Flitwick and Professor McGonagall had decided to keep the O.W.L. year students themselves. Professor McGonagall informed them irritably that as the Ministry had deemed many Transfiguration theory books unsuitable for untrained people, they would now be conducting most of the non-textbook readings out of copies she had made from her personal library. She handed out packets to the class, her raised eyebrows daring anyone to comment on it.

After lunch on Tuesdays, the Gryffindors now had a double History of Magic period. For the first time in Harry's memory the class looked forward to this eagerly, if nothing else out of curiosity. While History was not a subject most people were interested in. whether it was taught by Binns or not, this was the one class in which they knew for sure they would have an entirely new professor. They left in a group, a few minutes early, and headed to the classroom identified on their schedules, on the second floor on the lake side of the castle. There, they met with their first surprise: a number of Ravenclaws milling around the entrance to the room.

"Hey, Padma," Parvati said, "Are you all for History, too?"

"They must have combined us," Padma said, looking genuinely pleased. "I guess Binns doesn't need meal breaks..."

Harry had never spent much time with the Ravenclaws in their year, as they were not in any classes together, although he knew who Parvati's twin sister was. He had met a few of them in the Arithmancy class he now shared with Hermione, or hanging around with Cho, but most of them were unfamiliar. He and Hermione waved hello to Su Li and Anthony Goldstein on their way to free desks and looked around. 

Binns's room had always been very plain, perhaps as a result of the fact that he could not easily interact with objects. This classroom did not have the sort of interesting props that were often to be found in the Transfiguration or Defense classrooms, but there were maps pinned to the walls, and at the back of the room, a large oil painting of a sort of outdoor amphitheater, at the center of which two people were attempting to throttle the speaker with their bare hands while various other portrait subjects cheered or booed from the audience. As the last student sat down, the speaker gave a particular loud, gurgling cry and collapsed dramatically to the ground of the painting. Then the three of them stood up and bowed.

"Good afternoon," called a woman from the front of the classroom, and everyone's chairs shifted as they turned away from the painting. The professor Harry had noticed at dinner Sunday, Professor Weasley, stood at the front of the room. Her long auburn hair had been arranged in braided loops today, and she was smiling curiously down the room at them. 

"I am Professor Weasley, for those of you who didn't catch my name at dinner. I believe I have at least one cousin in this class - hello, Mr. Weasley--"

She nodded to Ron, who looked a mix of startled and mortified to be acknowledged, but waved back.

"Although we aren't previously acquainted. Now, the first thing I want to assure you of is that Professor Binns was teaching in his present unearthly form when I was at Hogwarts myself in the forties, and therefore I don't expect any of you to have retained a single fact from your previous classes." A few people laughed, although Hermione looked indignant. Professor Weasley turned her eyes on her and, smiling gently, added, "Although I shall be delighted if any of you can prove me wrong," and Hermione appeared somewhat mollified.

"My colleagues and I discussed beginning with a test to establish your current knowledge, but I don't want to force you to endure a minor O.W.L. examination to cover everything thoroughly. I'd like to begin with a discussion instead. If everyone could please come up to the front two rows of desks? --Leave your bags, you can return later, I just want to make sure we can all hear each other. Now," she said over the sounds of chairs scraping back, "What do you remember from your first year of History classes, anything?"

What followed was a very strange class. Professor Weasley allowed them to go off on tangents as long as they were related to history, and listened carefully to Hermione's account of her searches of newspapers as well as Parvati and Padma's excited recitation of family vacations and Dean's recounting of muggle primary classes, although she did sometimes ask questions to steer them to their points. She sat on the edge of her desk to talk to them and seemed to pay close attention, although Harry spotted the quill taking notes on its own on a back table quickly. 

At the end of the lesson she thanked them all politely, said that she would have a curriculum worked out for the particular class by their next meeting on Friday, and dismissed them.

"Well," Hermione said on the way out, "I suppose she'll be either very good or very bad, depending."

Harry, who did not have much opinion of History teaching, shrugged.

While their formal classes were over for the day, Harry had one more lesson on Tuesday evenings: Legilimency with Snape. After dinner he spent his free time working on letters to Dillena Potter MacDougal and Geva Potter Macmillan, then bid goodbye to Hermione, left the library and made his way once more down to the dungeons. As he knocked and entered Snape's office, he reflected that the murky jars and odd shapes surrounding him barely bothered him anymore. In fact, the office was beginning to seem comfortably familiar.

"Mr. Potter," Snape said, nodding to him. "Good evening. How was your break?"

Harry blinked. "Good enough, sir," he said cautiously. "How was yours?"

"Delightfully free of students," Snape said. "As I shall have to deal only with four class levels instead of seven, this term may even be tolerable. I hear you made progress in the fight against the Dark Lord?"

"Er, we found another Horcrux, yeah," Harry said, and carefully did not ask why he had not responded to Narcissa's blackmail at the beginning of the year by quitting when he detested students so much. "--Sir. Professor Dumbledore destroyed it." He wondered if Dumbledore had mentioned Cassiopeia to Snape. But surely Snape would not have missed an opportunity to insinuate something terrible about the Blacks if so.

"I also heard - from Black, as though having to speak to him regularly last year at meals was not enough - that you had another vision," Snape went on, rising as he spoke. Harry flinched back, but he only opened the door behind his desk. "I was under the impression, Mr. Potter, that you were making progress last term, but if you find work impossible--"

"It wasn't - I'm not having them regularly or anything," Harry said hastily. "I _do_ do the exercises before I sleep - normally - I just - hadn't expected to, then."

"No?" Snape said dangerously, gesturing impatiently for Harry to follow him back into the more private quarters. Harry felt rather mixed about this but had no choice to obey. As Snape closed the door, he glanced at Harry and said, "So what was the cause of this lack of focus...?"

Harry, unfortunately, blushed.

Snape's eyebrows inverted; then they raised. "Do I detect that this explanation might involve something _sordid_ , Mr. Potter? Perhaps relating to the company of Miss Chang?"

"Er," Harry said.

"Well." Snape snorted. The fury had drained out of his face, remarkably, as he came to sit down. "I will accept that it was a one time failure under the condition that it _remains_ one time only. Particularly," he remarked acidly, "As you are now back under the same roof, and it is nearly impossible to adequately supervise several hundred bored, hormonal _teenagers_ with a few dozen staff."

"Right," Harry said. "So, er - what are we doing today?"

"Well." Snape steepled his fingers. "Assuming that my impressions from before the holidays were correct, you are improving reasonably for your current state of maturity as a Legilimens. It was unfortunately necessary that you learn control earlier than most of our kind are capable of it for strategic reasons. You are now capable of entering someone's mind or retreating from it consciously, and therefore of containing your mind within your own brain with a reasonable margin of error. When it comes to your tendency to eavesdrop on the Dark Lord by accident, it is now a matter of endurance rather than ingenuity. That is, you must continue to exercise control at all times, but there is nothing more about it that I can teach you. You simply must not fail to concentrate, no matter what is going on, until he is dead." Snape shrugged, as though he had not just assigned Harry a Herculean task. 

"So is that why you asked me to come alone, sir?" Harry asked.

"Essentially. There is no more you can learn from investigating the mind of someone totally untutored in Occlumency," Snape said. "However, regarding the Dark Lord, I believe - and your godfather and Andromeda agree - that you will be better served if you have some experience in detecting counterfeit memories or visions, as it seems likely your concentration will sometimes fail. 

"I do not recommend that you seek out his mind deliberately. The Dark Lord is widely acknowledged to be one of the most powerful mind magic users on the planet and it is not likely you would learn to overcome his defenses before destroying him by other means, or indeed, before you died of natural causes. But it _is_ better that you can detect what is within your natural abilities. The skill may also be useful against his followers. So," Snape said, when Harry was beginning to wonder what he was getting at, "We will begin to work at overcoming Occlumency defenses. It will be necessary to start with general attack techniques. I do expect you to refrain from using these abilities on other students, lest you have to explain yourself to the Headmaster - which I mention in part so that you do not feel _morally compromised_." 

Snape smirked. Harry had the disconcerting feeling that what once would have been a joke solely at his expense now contained an invitation to share it, and fought not to laugh.

"You now know how to enter another's mind. You will do so at my command, and I will simulate - poor - shielding for you to attempt to batter down. It should not be too difficult at first. Then I will throw you out, and you will resist as long as you can. This part should be instinctive, particularly for someone with your insatiable curiosity and lack of respect for privacy," Snape drawled

"Thanks, sir," Harry said in the voice neutral voice he could muster.

Snape actually snorted before sitting back in his chair. "You may begin," he said, hands loosely resting on his knees.

Harry met Snape's black eyes and took a breath, feeling somewhat nervous. He had practiced before on Ron and Hermione, not on Snape himself. But Snape was correct that he knew the procedure. He took a slow breath, blocking out his awareness of the room and concentrating on the feeling of his mind's boundaries. As a natural Legilimens, he now knew, there was a difference between his mind and other people's, and it was that these boundaries were porous, flexible and under his control.

He extended his mind outward until he could touch Snape's. Just as Snape had said, there was a sort of wall at the edge, or shell, instead of the way Hermione or Ron's mind would trail off into the magic around them. But it was not a strong wall, or an immovable barrier. It felt thin and fragile, like that of an egg. He tapped their minds together hard, cracking it, and slipped through the shield into Snape's mind for the first time.

His view of the room returned, subtly warped. Snape was concentrating on the present in order to keep Harry out of his private thoughts, so instead of the wandering he had found in his friends' minds he saw Snape's living quarters themselves, oddly distorted by Snape's perceptions. He did not notice the skulls or the faces in the trunk particularly, but the books stood out to him, especially Snape’s favorites or ones he was particularly looking forward to reading. He noticed the faint odor of spices and potions ingredients from the kitchen and from the office beyond the door and identified them in the background. Snape was taller than Harry and his vision was better and did not contain blurry peripherals outside the rims of glasses. 

Harry was starting to feel he had a grip on Snape's present thoughts. His perception abruptly twisted. He felt pressure on his mind as Snape began to push him out of his own. 

He had been told to resist, and it wasn't at all difficult, unlike everything else Snape had tried to teach him. Harry hooked himself into Snape's thoughts, paying attention to his awareness of the room, of Harry - and he looked very strange from Snape's eyes, small and young and rude, and doubled over at all times with the images of his parents. He caught the association between his own green eyes and his mother's and followed the thought to a memory, deeper in Snape's mind, where he would be harder to extract...

Lily was sitting across from Snape very like this, in a small room with grubby windows and two threadbare couches, although the table between them was an old crate. Outside the present, Harry viewed them from the side in the memory, although he knew Snape’s perceptions were still filtering the scene. Lily's hands cupped a chipped mug as she regarded Snape, steadily, with those unblinking and faintly eerie green eyes.

"I just don't know, Sev," she said, blowing across the surface of her tea. "With the friends you've been making..."

"What am I supposed to do, not talk to my dorm mates?" the young Snape muttered, hunched in the couch. It was obvious that he had recently had a growth spurt. His arms and legs looked far too long for his body and he did not yet seem to know what to do with their length. "It's _hard_ being muggle raised in Slytherin, I have to lie about what I do on holiday all the time..."

"I'm not saying you have to stand up in the common room and declaim for muggle rights, Sev," Lily said. "But you could, say, refrain from going around agreeing with them, spouting their rhetoric, and providing alibis for when they attack people." 

Snape flushed. "Like your house mates _don't_."

"I'm not saying I like Black and Potter," Lily said. "But you have to admit--"

"I don't _have_ to admit anything. They get off on beating up students, and they know no one will care as long as it's a Slytherin without money."

"Whereas your friends know no one will care as long as it's a _muggle-raised_ student?" Lily said, then sighed. "Look, I don't want to fight about the stupid gang stuff again, okay? We're away from school, we agreed we wouldn't talk about school stuff."

"You're the one who brought up my friends," Snape muttered. He picked up the second mug from the crate and fiddled with it but didn't drink. "I don't see what they have to do with us."

"You don't see why I might be a little reluctant to marry someone who goes around saying everyone _but_ me of my heritage isn't human?" Lily folded her arms.

Snape flushed even redder. "Look, it's not like they're going to attack you," he said. "Avery and Mulciber still remember you're a Parselmouth."

"But my best girlfriend is fine?" Lily's brows arched. Snape went silent and fidgeted. Lily did not speak to help him out, only set her tea down and regarded him evenly with her painfully green eyes - eyes Harry had never seen in another person before the Mirror of Erised--

Awareness of himself as a separate entity jarred him from the memory, and he felt Snape's mind twisting again, trying to shove him out. He focused on the Snape in the memory instead, the gawky, awkward teenager, and fell through the emotion into a second, deeper buried one--

He was in a crowded hall filled with people in dress robes and gowns. Across the room, musicians played, and there was dancing, but the memory was focused on an assortment of tables on one side of the hall. Harry could not see where Snape might be, although this was his memory, so it had to be very close. It did not seem at all like his kind of party, and Harry studied the shadowy corners for someone lurking there until he heard Narcissa, many years younger but still recognizable.

"--I thought you looked tired, dove," she was saying from a little round table quite near Harry's perspective. She was only a few years older than him, perhaps twenty. If the Narcissa Harry had met was beautiful, the younger Narcissa was transcendent. She wore emerald brocaded with silver thread, and her pale hair spilled down her back to her thighs, scattered with small braids wound up with silver thread and tiny bells. "I brought you something to eat, I don't know if you're quite used to the wine..."

She was speaking to a young, dark haired girl, who sat at the table with her head in one hand. Just as Narcissa finished the girl stifled a yawn, muffling it with one hand. She was dressed in pale pink, with ribbons braided into her hair that made her look even younger. Harry could not see her face all that well, but thought she might be around Ginny's age or a year or two younger, and was probably at - wherever they were - with her parents.

Then she lifted her head and Harry choked. 

Makeup had been applied carefully, de-emphasizing the nose and making the eyes look bigger, and the hair and skin was clean, but it was nevertheless obviously Snape; a young Snape, in the early years of Hogwarts.

"Thank you, Miss Black," Snape said quietly. Harry recognized the voice of someone trying hard not to give away any trace of a regional accent and not quite succeeding. "I - the wine must have gone to my head, like you said." He took the small plate Narcissa pressed on him, filled with several kinds of biscuit and a slice of cake. "Did you see where Lucius went? I mean..." He blushed.

"It's quite alright, dear," Narcissa said, although there was an obvious edge in her voice. "He may be my fiance but there's no attachment between us. I know he has no interest in women. I'm not jealous."

"Oh. Thank you," Snape said awkwardly and began to eat. His manners were not remotely what Harry had expected once he realized he was watching his young Potions professor dressed in drag, particularly after the last memory. He ate daintily and carefully, as though he knew what he was doing here. "Have you seen him?" he asked again after a few bites.

Narcissa looked reluctant but said, "I think he's speaking with his father and the Minister right now, you've no need to hurry over. Eat, I saw you didn't have a bite at dinner. You're in my cousin's class, aren't you? Third year?"

Snape looked faintly trapped. "Er, yeah, but we're in different houses," he said, voice sliding from his real accent back into the forced, soft and polished tone. "I don't know him well."

Third year, Harry thought, and followed Narcissa's gaze towards Lucius Malfoy, easily identifiable with his hair only a shade or two off Narcissa's. He was indeed standing, arms folded, next to an older man with similar coloring. While he, too, was much younger than Harry had last seen him, he was very plainly an adult.

Belatedly a memory came to Harry of Carya Greengrass saying at the Second Task last year that Lucius Malfoy had brought a teenager in drag to the Ministry Yule Ball his first year out of school, trying to offend Orion Black. Harry had not really given it much thought, but if he had, he must have assumed that Lucius had brought a boyfriend, or at least a classmate within a couple of years of his own age...

The memory rippled again. Harry remembered from a distance that he was supposed to resist being thrown out but there was nothing in the memory that seemed bearable to focus on, nothing he remotely wanted to see, and he went with relief back to the classroom.

If he had hoped Snape had not realized which memory he had fallen into he was be disappointed. Snape's lips were pressed together and white. Harry had grown used to his usual appearance, his greasy hair and skin, but after the memory of the Ministry Yule Ball they came as a shock.

"Get out," Snape said, low and furious. 

Harry grabbed for his bag furiously and started to go. Sounding a hair calmer, Snape said, "You did better than I expected - next week, the usual time - _now go_."

Harry waited until there were two doors shut between them, Snape's quarters and his office, and then he turned and ran.

The worst thing, Harry decided that evening, was that he couldn't talk to anyone about what he'd seen. Hermione had immediately pegged that he was upset and demanded to know what had happened. She had only been half-appeased when Harry said he'd seen something private in Snape's mind and he couldn't tell her what. But he wasn't sure he would have talked to her even if it had not been a violation. The person he really wanted to go to for help understanding was Sirius, but of course that was impossible. Snape would be furious.

Finally, after an hour of trying to sleep and replaying in confusion both memories, he got up and started a letter to someone he had never written to directly: Narcissa. She had been there in the second memory, so it was probably all right to ask her about it, he justified. He did not put the details in the letter, having been drilled by now on the possibility of interference. He didn’t have anything to key the encryption spell to for Narcissa. But he mentioned a Christmas memory of Snape's in which she had been present, and that he did not know what to think or how to understand it but did not feel it would be tactful to make Snape talk about it with him. Sirius could share something of his to encrypt her reply. He made it sound as though he had seen the memories by accident in a Pensieve or something in case the letter was intercepted. Then he hastily added greetings and well wishes for her health, and some news of his first two days of class with new teachers, and sealed the letter to mail in the morning. The next day he had to hurry to get it to the Owlery before Arithmancy, and as a result he did not have much time to rethink sending it, or the other two letters to the Potter women.

As Harry reached Arithmancy and took his usual table with Hermione, Draco, and Daphne and Tracey, he saw that Professor Vector also had her TA in class. Sotero was talking to her at the front of the room with the same expressive gestures he had used with Hermione. He appeared unfazed by the way the class was staring at him and whispering. Evidently enough of them had remembered his introduction as Assistant Lestrange to remind the rest.

"All right," Professor Vector said when the bell rang, turning to the class. "This is our new Teaching Assistant, Sotero Lestrange. There wasn't time for the Headmaster to get into this at dinner, so let me briefly assure you that the family Lestrange has about a thousand members in France and a wide variety of political positions. Mr. Lestrange is with us in Britain in part because he distressed the Head of their family - who happens to be the Duke of Brittany - and the national censorship board by writing pro-democracy letters to the newspaper." 

This set off a new round of whispering. Professor Vector rolled her eyes tolerantly. "Therefore he is _not_ a supporter of You-Know-Who, regardless of what the most recent British branch of his family is famous for. He will be leading optional review sessions a few times a week - the schedule is posted on my office door, and I'll pass out copies in a minute - and coming in to assist with our classes periodically. You may approach either of us with questions. I recommend that if you're having trouble with your homework or getting questions wrong and don't understand why, you come to a review session. Now, if everyone could hand in your homework problems..."

The class was normal after that, if rather more talkative than usual. Daphne and Tracey spent several minutes trying to guess where Sotero fell in the Lestrange family tree in France, which Draco participated in laconically enough that Daphne accused him of knowing something and wanting to tease them. Fortunately, she seemed to think this was usual Draco behavior. As the five of them were doing fairly well as a group between Draco, Daphne, and Hermione when she looked up from her separate assignments, Sotero did not linger by their table for terribly long. At the end of the class, with ten minutes until the bell rang, Professor Vector called Hermione up. Harry watched her approach the table nervously. She looked confused at first, then suddenly beamed. A few minutes later she practically skipped back to their table.

"What'd Vector tell you?" Harry asked. "Did you get 112% on an exam again?"

"She got _what_?" Draco said.

"First year, in Charms," Harry said.

"No," Hermione said. "She said she'd read my publication in _Arithmancy_ , and she’s been giving me extra work since I started but she said it was ridiculous for me to be stuck going through lessons if I was that advanced. She asked if I'd rather do a research project during class time or if I might want to take a job as TA. They had funding for more teaching positions but couldn't find that many qualified people in Britain, so she said she could hire me part time if I wanted. I'd have to keep my grades up to be allowed, especially O.W.L. year."

"What do you need money for?" Draco demanded. "You're a Black foster child."

"It's not _my_ money, is it?" Hermione pointed out.

"If you--" Draco paused, glancing at Daphne and Tracey.

"If you're poorly concealing that she received an offer of adoption, that's been gossip for months," Daphne said, rolling her eyes. "That's half of why I thought I could get away with dancing with you two in public."

"Well, I don't know whether I'm going to accept or not," Hermione said. "And it might be nice to know I had an alternative."

" _Why_ ," Draco muttered.

"Because pureblood men are all arseholes?" Tracey said pointedly.

"If you'd been raised under the authority of Argus Greengrass you'd understand why she's reluctant," Daphne said, and turning to Hermione, "I don't know if you want advice, but I'd tell her you're interested for next year but not O.W.L.s, because this is a bad term to find out you can't handle working _and_ classes. Ask if she'll petition for you to be allowed to sit the N.E.W.T. exam this year though, if she thinks you're qualified. And you're right, having an alternative is a good idea even if you do take the adoption, it's not like your family having money means they can't cut you off at any time." Daphne hesitated then added, "That's what happened to Mum. Her father's the head of the Selwyn family, but they haven't been speaking since before she got married."

" _Before_ she got married?" Harry asked. "Did she run away?"

"Kind of," Daphne said. "She challenged her father to an honor duel when she was fifteen—"

Draco choked.

"--Got her arse handed to her, and went home with her cousins. It's part of why she married so poor," Daphne added awkwardly, glancing down at her robes. Harry knew from previous conversations that her school robes this year were the first new ones she'd worn since she was a small child. "Anyway," Daphne said, "Whether you're going to become a Black or not, you want to have your own savings, and if you get a job at school there's a reason for your Head to set up an individual bank account for you that won't raise any eyebrows."

"Do you think that poorly of Sirius?" Hermione asked, sounding more curious than offended.

"I don't really know him. I believe you three when you say he's fine." Daphne shrugged. "But you never know when he might die and leave the family to someone who isn't, or _everyone_ dies and the Ministry ends up replacing them, and besides, people do change."

The bell rang for break then and they got up to leave. Harry had been reminded of something by Daphne's comment about the wedding over break. "Narcissa wanted us to tell you something she heard from your mother," Harry said to Daphne quietly, under the cover of fifteen or so chairs being pulled back and bags collected. "Come with us?" 

There were still plenty of unused classrooms in Hogwarts, and they located one quickly and cast spells against eavesdropping. There, Harry and Hermione quickly summarized what Narcissa had told them.

"So she thinks I fancy you," Daphne said and put her hands over her face. "Merlin, this is a mess."

"I mean," Tracey said uncertainly, putting her arm over Daphne's shoulders. "It means she might not be homicidal if she finds out I'm a muggleborn."

"Narcissa said she didn't know what she would do," Hermione said. "If she thought you were really seeing a muggleborn girl."

"We'll see what she says about my marriage," Daphne said, curling her knees to her chest and leaning into her girlfriend's side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Liked this? [Find it](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/644347353417007105/the-glass-fortress-chpt-26-the-ministry-yule) and me on tumblr!


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